The Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program is having a measurable effect on the likelihood that older adults in and around the District of Columbia will have private long-term care insurance (LTCI). Analysts at AARP, the Commonwealth Fund and the SCAN Foundation have hinted at the power of the government’s voluntary long-term care (LTC) benefits program in one of the many tables included in a new state-by-state LTC performance scorecard report.
The analysts used 26 indicators to rate the states. The analysts found that four states that tend to rank at the top on acute health care rankings — Minnesota, Washington state, Oregon and Colorado — led in terms of support for people who need long-term care and their caregivers.
Several states that often do poorly in acute health rankings — Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky — lurked in the bottom of the new LTC performance scoreboard.
The analysts put a private LTCI ownership indicator — the number of private LTCI policies in force per 1,000 adults over the age of 40 — in a collection of “affordability and access” indicators. The average for the country as a whole increased to 46 in 2011, from 44 in 2009.