Home-based care and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) got a big boost Thursday from one of the nation’s leading think tanks on aging.

In a new report, The Milken Institute and insurance company Genworth Financial called on the public and private sector to examine the challenges of the long term care crisis — including financing, technology and care challenges — and recommended ways to overcome those barriers.

The report advocated scaling up the PACE program, developing a public-private initiative to finance long-term care, and designing a mechanism to better analyze the costs and benefits of technology solutions like telehealth.

“Middle-income Americans are stuck between being unable to afford private long-term care, and not qualifying for government-sponsored programs like Medicaid,” said Nora Super, senior director of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging.

The report is the result of a Financial Innovations Lab the Milken Institute organized in the fall of last year. It brought together experts from government, long-term care delivery, insurance, finance and academia to develop solutions to provide quality, affordable long-term care for middle-income households.

Genworth President and CEO Tom McInerney said the pandemic brought greater awareness of the shortfalls of the long-term care ecosystem and said it will take “collaboration and innovative thinking … to effect change that is so desperately needed.”

Healthcare journal Health Affairs estimates that by 2029 more than half of the nation’s 14.4 million seniors won’t have the financial means to pay for long-term care.

Related Articles