AHIP: Private LTC Can Save Public Health Programs

Ignagni spoke at the hearing after Kathryn Allen, a Medicaid and private health insurance expert at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, who emphasized the need to keep long term care costs from swamping government health programs.

“We have been able to sustain these entitlements in the past with low Depression-era birth rates and a large post-war workforce,” Allen said. “However, absent substantive reform of entitlement programs, a rapid escalation of federal spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is virtually certain to overwhelm the rest of the federal budget.”

The American Council of Life Insurers, Washington, issued a statement praising lawmakers for holding the hearing.

“Although ACLI is neutral on specific issues relating to Medicaid reform, we believe the broader use of long term care insurance will help decrease the future financial burden on the program by encouraging personal responsibility,” ACLI President Frank Keating says in the statement.

The ACLI is continuing to support the kinds of LTC insurance tax breaks Deal has been proposing, and it also is recommending that Deal’s subcommittee look for ways to expand the Long Term Care Partnership program. The program gives the states that have tried it the ability to encourage the purchase of private LTC insurance by giving private LTC insurance holders preferred access to Medicaid LTC benefits if private benefits are exhausted.

Links to written versions of statements delivered at the hearing are on the Web at http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/04272005hearing1487/hearing.htm