Word: healthfulness
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...would sign up their employees, who would then have the ability to opt out. The cash benefits could be applied to nursing-home care, but in an effort to encourage enrollees to stay in their own homes, payouts could cover such things as wheelchair ramps and wages for home health care aides...
...about $200 per day. Yet millions of Americans who need long-term care but can't afford to pay for it have to "spend down" all their assets, become poor enough to qualify for Medicaid and then move to nursing homes, which the program covers. (Medicaid coverage for home health services varies from state to state.) This does not come cheap for the government, which pays about 60% of all long-term-care costs in the U.S.; only about 5% of Americans currently have private long-term-care insurance. "Medicaid is invaluable," says Judy Feder, a health policy expert...
While everyone agrees that allowing elderly and disabled Americans to stay in their homes is better from a fiscal standpoint, certain details of the CLASS Act have made it an easy target for critics. Examining the merits of these criticisms provides a window to understanding both the complexity of health care reform and why it's so ripe for mischaracterization. For instance, to 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...
...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...