Many health care experts still want to build long term care benefits into Medicare.
Researchers at the Commonwealth Fund, New York, have reported that finding in a summary of results from a survey of about 1,000 individuals involved in health policy, health care delivery and health care finance.
About 79% of the survey participants said they support the idea of using an extra Medicare premium to pay to add an LTC benefit to Medicare.
The researchers also found that 64% of the participants support using tax incentives to encourage individuals to buy private LTC insurance.
About 63% favor transferring responsibility for Medicaid nursing home benefits to the federal government, from the states.