The Future of Facility-Based Long Term Care in America: Nursing Homes and Assisted Living ...

127 Pages·2007·1.89 MB·English

by  Charles King

The Future of Long Term Care in America
THE FUTURE OF
LONG TERM CARE
IN AMERICA
Views and Recommendations
by Prominent Experts
Genworth Financial
Copyright ©  by the authors. All rights reserved.
ISBN ----
Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Buck Stinson, President,
Genworth Financial Long Term Care Insurance
The Boomers: Igniting a Revolution
to Reinvent Long Term Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
William D. Novelli, CEO,
AARP
Caregiving: Being There for Our Elders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Gail Hunt, President and CEO,
National Alliance for Caregiving
Home Is Where the Care Is! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Larry Minnix, President and CEO,
American Association for Homes and Services for the Aging
The Future of Facility-Based Long Term Care in America:
Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities . . . . . . . . . 37
Bruce Yarwood, President and CEO,
American Health Care Association and
the National Center for Assisted Living
The Future of Independent Living Communities. . . . . . . . .49
David Schless, President,
American Seniors Housing Association
Alzheimer’s Disease: The Biggest
Long Term Care Risk for Baby Boomers. . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Harry Johns, President and CEO,
Alzheimer’s Association
Managing the Impact of Advanced Chronic Illness in the
Elderly by the Year  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Peter A. Boling, MD, Professor of Medicine,
Virginia Commonwealth University
Public Funding for Long Term Care Programs . . . . . . . . . . .85
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for
International Economics,
Congressional Budget Offi ce Director, –
Transforming Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95
Zach Sikes, Senior Vice President,
American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging,
Center for Aging Services Technology
Long Term Care and the American Electorate . . . . . . . . . . 107
Glen Bolger, Co-Founder and Partner,
Public Opinion Strategies
Mark Mellman, President and CEO,
The Mellman Group
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Note: Each chapter is introduced by a vignette relevant to its topic.
Chapter vignettes were made possible by the National Family Caregiver
Association and others.
Foreword
Buck Stinson
President, Genworth Financial Long Term Care Insurance
Millions of Americans will face the prospect of needing or
providing long term care at some point in their lives. The
broad-reaching impact is compelling when you consider the full
spectrum of long term care—from nursing home care for those
with the most complex needs, to adult daycare and assisted liv-
ing facilities, to home care often provided by family members
or home health aides.
With the aging baby boomer generation nearly  million
strong, long term care is an ever-increasing focus for our nation’s
policymakers as more people look for solutions to eff ectively
address the fi nancial and emotional consequences of long term
care.
Nationally, we spend more than $ billion each year on
long term care, and this doesn’t include the value of donated
services. Government programs such as Medicaid, particularly at
its current funding levels, cannot provide the volume and quality
of long term care needed in the years ahead. At the state level,
governors are fi ghting an uphill battle to contain Medicaid long
term care expenditures as their states face mounting shortfalls.
Meanwhile, in just a few short years, families can deplete an entire
life’s savings as they pay for a loved one’s increasingly expensive
care out of their own pockets.
Considering these facts, we must acknowledge that, as a na-
tion and as individuals, we are not prepared for the social and
fi nancial crisis that long term care presents right now and into
the future.
Genworth Financial is committed to elevating awareness of
this important issue. To that end, we engaged leading experts
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x - The Future of Long Term Care in America
on long term care issues in America to cover multiple dimen-
sions of this complex topic and asked that they draw on their
diverse professional experiences to off er possible solutions to the
impending crisis. Genworth gave these authors no instruction
beyond providing us with their unique insights. We asked them
to explain the long term care situation as they see it today and
as they see it evolving in the future. And this is precisely what
we present to you in this book.
We thank these authors for their time and thoughtful con-
tributions. While Genworth’s positions may not always align
completely with our authors’ views, it is through the frank ex-
change of ideas and a collaborative eff ort between public and
private sectors that we will fi nd solutions to our nation’s long
term care problems.
We believe this dialogue needs to begin now both on the
national level and around every family’s kitchen table. Being
prepared for long term care in America requires that we plan
for the future today.