A state lawmaker in California wants policymakers to look into the possibility of setting up a long-term care insurance (LTCI) program aimed at middle-income resident.
The lawmaker, Assembly member Ian Calderon, D-Industry, Calif., has introduced Assembly Bill 332. The bill calls for the state’s insurance commissioner to convene a task force to “examine the components necessary to design a statewide long-term care insurance program.”
The A.B. 332 task force would have to list options for establishing the LTCI program and assess the feasibility of each option in a report to be completed by Jan. 1, 2017.
The task force would include government officials, at least one representative from a labor union representing long-term care workers, and “key senior health policy and long-term care insurance stakeholders.”
The bill would let the insurance commissioner seek and use private funds to pay for the work of the task force.
The task force would consider whether the state could put an LTCI program in the existing state disability insurance program and pay the benefits through the same mechanisms the state now uses to pay paid family leave benefits.
In A.B. 332, Calderon seems to assume that, at least in some ways, a California public LTCI program might resemble the CLASS Act voluntary long-term care (LTC) benefits program. The program, which was created by a section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), was found to be actuarially unsustainable, in part because the program would be voluntary, and in part because people who were working but already qualified to receive LTC benefits would be eligible to participate in the program.