U.S. Not Ready for a Flood of Long-Term Care Costs, Panel Warns

WASHINGTON — The United States is not prepared to deal with a burgeoning elderly population that is living longer while the costs of long-term care keep rising, a bipartisan national commission warned Monday.

The 22-member panel, headed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., urged Congress and the presidential candidates to make long-term care a higher national priority.

"This is an issue that is real, it is personal, and it is ripe for dramatic leadership in the country," Gingrich said at a news conference unveiling the commission's 94-page final report.

Kerrey said he was surprised and disappointed that none of the presidential candidates of either party has paid much attention to long-term care, and called upon whomever is elected president next year to include it in his or her first State of the Union message in 2009.

A poll conducted for the commission found that 94 percent of voters feel that reforming the long-term care system is important, and more than two-thirds said it has not been addressed by the presidential candidates.

The report said the United States needs to shift its way of thinking about long-term care from something handled on the state level to the national level.

"Aging in America is a national experience," Gingrich said. "You're born in one state, you work in a second state, you retire to a third state and you may wind up in long-term care in a fourth state, and to try to have a state-level fix, I think, is clearly inadequate."

But the report stopped short of advocating a federal long-term care program or calling for federal financing of long-term care.

"We do not need a financing system which transfers power to a bureaucracy, we need a financing system which empowers the individual, which empowers the family, and helps them," Gingrich said.

"We very much do not want to see this become a government-only program, but we don't think it can be truly voluntary or purely private," he said.

Instead, the report outlined four areas where the federal government can lead and direct changes in long-term care, including:

— Quality. Setting standards for measuring quality care and making it easier for consumers to be able to compare quality in all forms of long-term care, including nursing homes, home health care, assisted living facilities and adult day care centers.

— Workforce. Encouraging more people to enter and remain in the field of long-term care and pushing for better pay, training and other employment incentives.

— Technology. Helping develop and disseminate information technology such as electronic health records.

— Financing. Developing a system that stresses individual responsibility while providing a role for the government and private sector.

The commission's poll found that nearly two out of three adults said they would participate in a voluntary contribution system costing $50 a month toward long-term care.

Kerrey acknowledged that the commission was unable to recommend a single solution to the thorny question of how a national long-term care system could be financed.

Instead, the panel listed a series of options, including a national program that would require most people to contribute to the system but allow people who obtained long-term care coverage elsewhere to opt out of the system.

On the Web:

National Commission for Quality Long-term Care: www.ncqltc.org