LTSS / HCBS / PACE
Denver-based InnovAge, the largest Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly provider, is advocating that the Michigan legislature pass a bill that would allow it to petition the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to offer its home care services in the metropolitan Detroit market, according to Crain’s Detroit.
While congratulating President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victories at the polls, executives of the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living and LeadingAge are calling for Congress to work in the time before the Jan. 20 inauguration to pass an aid package to help long-term care operators and others battling the coronavirus.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has extended the deadline until Nov. 18 for those who would like to provide feedback its proposed national quality and outcomes measures for the Medicaid-funded home- and community-based services provided for older adults and others. Comments originally were due Oct. 19.
Focusing more on home- and community-based services such as those provided in some assisted living communities, rather than on institutional care such as that provided in nursing homes, is one way that state and federal policymakers can address the “potentially catastrophic costs” of long-term care, according to a new report by the National Institute on Retirement Security.
Assisted living supply has improved in three states in recent years, as measured by the number of assisted living and residential care units per 1,000 people aged 75 or more years, according to the 2020 Long-Term Services and Supports State Scorecard, released Thursday by the AARP and the AARP Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund and the SCAN Foundation.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will make up to $165 million in supplemental funding available to states operating Money Follows the Person demonstration programs to help state Medicaid programs boost efforts to move older adults and people with disabilities from nursing homes and other institutional settings to home- and community-based settings, the agency announced Wednesday. Such home- and community-based settings could include assisted living communities.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is seeking feedback on proposed national quality and outcomes measures for the Medicaid-funded home- and community-based services provided for older adults and others.
Providers cheered federal health officials’ decision to withdraw a proposal they warned could cut up to $50 billion nationwide from the Medicaid program annually.
A proposed constitutional amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot in the state of Washington seeks to gain voter approval for public money held in a fund for long-term care services and supports to be invested by the state government, including in private stocks.
Financial relief from the government and liability protections from coronavirus-related lawsuits won’t be enough to fix long-standing flaws in the long-term services and supports system, a leading expert cautioned.
Over the past decade, design trends have been pushing a more progressive, upbeat vision of senior living, one that encourages more independence and social connectivity. Yet the deadly impact of the coronavirus may be forcefully pushing the sector’s design back in the opposite direction, reports an article in Bloomberg Thursday.
The Treasury and other federal agencies should do a better job educating consumers about long-term care and the need to finance it. That’s according to a report released last week by the Federal Interagency Task Force on Long-Term Care Insurance. The analysis, which summarizes two years worth of LTC insurance system review, noted that the Financial Literacy Education Commission should include long-term care planning among its retirement education topics.
Social insurance initiatives to help finance long-term services and supports are gaining traction at the state level because “the costs of waiting around for something to happen at the federal level is exceeding the cost of trying to do something,” according to the author of a new report on the topic.
Senior living associations say they appreciate that former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is prioritizing long-term care in his proposal to create a “21st-century caregiving and education workforce.”
Citing concerns related to the coronavirus, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Tuesday said it would give states an additional year to comply with a settings rule related to the provision of home- and community-based services to older or disabled Medicaid beneficiaries.
Young adults’ interest in buying long-term care insurance could bode well for senior living, providing the financial flexibility to afford moving to a senior living community later in life, according to the recently released results of a survey.
The COVID-19 pandemic has “amplified and exposed an already deeply flawed system” for long-term care in the United States, according to an analysis Wednesday in Forbes.
Although it remains to be seen whether the HEROES Act reaches the president’s desk, five provisions of the original or House-passed bill have a chance of becoming law, according to one source. Read other coronavirus-related news, too.
Federal and state advocates for senior living and home- and community-based services providers say it is a mistake for governments not to prioritize these providers’ needs for personal protective equipment and funding.
A bill that raises the minimum age at which people are required to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts was signed into law in late December as part of a spending package that also increased funding for Alzheimer’s research.
