Sunday, October 12, 2008

What Do The Candidates Have to Say About Long-term Care?

Welcome to the AAHSA meeting in Philadelphia

October 7, 2008 in financing long term care, long-term care, making a difference, politics | Tags: Barack Obama, caregiving, cash and counseling, election, John McCain, long-term care, politics | by Sarah Mashburn

Today’s Changing Aging blog has a great post about one of my favorite blog topics: the presidential candidates and long-term care.

Recently, AARP Magazine asked both candidates to respond to the following question:

How would you shift long-term care services and financing so that people can afford to stay in their homes and communities as long as appropriate?

Here are their answers:

John McCain: I am confident in the pioneering approaches for delivering care to people in a home setting, and would look to them first as models for how we need to approach this issue. There have been a variety of promising state-based experiments such as Cash and Counseling or The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). Through these programs, seniors are given a monthly assistance which they can use to hire workers and purchase care-related services and goods. They can get help managing their care by designating representatives, such as relatives or friends, to help make decisions. it also offers counseling and bookkeeping services to assist consumers.

Barack Obama: The long-term care system is heavily biased toward institutional care — even though most people would rather remain at home — and the quality of care is often poor. Moreover, nursing home and home care are very expensive, and Medicare coverage for both is limited, making catastrophic expenses routine. As President, I will work to give seniors choices about their care, consistent with their needs, and not biased towards institutional care. I will work to reform the financing of long-term care to protect seniors and families from impoverishment or debt. I will work to improve the quality of elder care, including by giving our long-term care and geriatric workforce the respect and support they deserve and training more nurses and health care workers in geriatrics.

Partisanship aside, I agree with elements of both Obama and McCain’s responses. McCain makes a good case for consumer choice and personal responsibility in his support of Cash and Counseling and other person-centered programs. On the other hand, Obama acknowledges that long-term care is expensive and that we should develop programs that help seniors and their loved ones address these costs. It’s no coicidence that both elements are included in our Long-term Care Solution Initiative. I guess that that makes me a “purple person” when it comes to this topic. What do you think?