Hillary Clinton has borrowed a page from life and health insurers’ playbook this month and proposed offering a tax credit of up to $1,200 for middle-income families that are caring for parents or grandparents, or for relatives with disabilities.
Clinton unveiled the tax credit Sunday, according to press reports.
She says in a summary on her campaign website that the tax credit could pay 20 percent of families’ caregiving costs, up to a maximum of $6,000 in costs.
She has also proposed looking for a way to reduce the impact of caregiving on the caregivers’ Social Security benefits, and investing $10 million per year over 10 years in a new federal caregiver respite program, to give caregivers temporary breaks from caregiving responsibilities.
See also: LTCI Watch: Where’s the woof?
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) included a voluntary, government-run long-term care (LTC) benefits program that was killed after Medicare actuaries ruled that the program might be unsustainable. Clinton has not proposed the return of the PPACA LTC benefits program or the creation of a similar LTC benefits program.
Clinton made her caregiver support announcement as the private long-term care insurance (LTCI) community was nearing the end of this month’s Long-Term Care Awareness Month campaign.
See also: GAO sees older Americans still suffering
Low interest rates and problems with predicting claims have made offering the kinds of comprehensive LTCI products insurers used to promote challenging this year.