October 14, 2011—The Obama admin has eliminated the community-based long-term care program, CLASS, from the Affordable Care Act. After a 19-month long review, Health and Human Services (HHS) and outside experts determined that the CLASS program, which is voluntary, would have been financially unsustainable.
Since CLASS is a voluntary program, it would have attracted older, sicker workers as opposed to younger, healthier ones. This dynamic would generate a destructive cycle in which premiums would have to rise to pay out higher benefits. Officials such at Kathy Greenlee, program administrator, believe the imbalance would ultimately result in the program collapsing. Greenlee predicted that premiums for the program could have cost $391 a month or reached as high as $3,000 a month for a benefit that paid out only $50 a day.
The inability of officials to determine this program as “actuarially sound for the next 75 years,” which the law requires, makes the implementation of CLASS impossible. Though no alternative has been provided, the CLASS act has not disappeared entirely. As Sebelius states, the need for Americans to have access to affordable long-term care programs is still evident.
“What we’ve determined at this point – is that we do not have a path to move forward,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told reporters on Friday. Â In her letter to senior Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, Sebelius wrote “The challenge that CLASS was created to address is not going away. By 2020 we know that an estimated 15 million Americans will need some kind of long-term care and fewer than three percent have a long-term care policy.”
What do you think of the decision to eliminate CLASS?
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