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...prevent people from purchasing long-term-care coverage when they are already in need, the CLASS Act requires that enrollees be employed and pay into the system for five years before becoming eligible to collect benefits. But because the CBO evaluates the costs of legislation - like the Senate reform bill - based on 10-year periods, the CLASS Act - which would begin collecting premiums in 2011 but wouldn't begin payouts until 2016 - appears to generate $72.5 billion in savings between 2010 and 2019. On paper, these savings are used to offset spending in the bill, which even CLASS Act supporters...
...term, but that's only because of the peculiar way the deficit is calculated. Premiums collected would be invested in federal securities, and when the interest earned is transferred back to the CLASS Act trust fund, the transaction would be recorded as an increase in the deficit. The Senate bill also requires that the CLASS Act trust fund be solvent over a 75-year period, and the bill would give the secretary of Health and Human Services power to raise premiums and reduce benefits to keep it afloat. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
Still, Republicans are not the only ones protesting the CLASS Act on the grounds that it won't work financially. In October, seven Democrats wrote to Senate majority leader Harry Reid urging him to exclude the CLASS Act - already included in the passed House health reform bill - from the Senate's legislation, saying they had "grave concerns that [the CLASS Act would] create a new federal entitlement program with large, long-term spending increases that far exceed revenues." The chief actuary for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wrote that the CLASS Act provisions in the House bill...
These are damning statements, but here again, the devil is in the details. The CLASS Act in Reid's Senate bill is considerably stronger in fiscal terms, according to the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA), than the much criticized act as outlined in the House and HELP committee bills. "There have been quite a few changes in the right direction," says Steven Schoonveld, an actuary who wrote the original critical AAA report on the CLASS Act in the HELP bill...
...selection," attracting people to the program who were too disabled to hold a job and therefore sure to file claims. Of course, excluding these people also means that spouses who stay at home just to care for their children (or for other reasons) are excluded from eligibility. The House bill also did not include the 75-year solvency requirement. (See "The Year in Health...