Posted on: Wednesday, April 17, 2002
EDITORIAL
Study shows need for long-term-care plan
It's a shame that a long-term-care proposal in the Legislature this year, instead of becoming a law that would offer a modicum of hope to families facing huge costs, has become, in the words of the AARP state director, a political football.
That's especially so in light of a new study by the MetLife Mature Market Institute, which indicates that Honolulu is among the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest private nursing home costs — $220 a day.
Startling as that number must sound to those of us who haven't given much thought to what very likely will be a fact of life, some people looking at the study thought the number seemed too low.
No one among proponents of the CarePlus long-term-care plan suggests that it provides a quick and dirty fix for this problem, but it's an important and badly needed start. It would levy $10 a month on working people age 25 to 98. In return, they would be eligible for $70 a day in cash benefits for a year's worth of long-term care. And yes, that full benefit wouldn't kick in until after 10 years of dues-paying.
But again, it's a start. Perhaps for the family faced with paying $220 a day for a loved one, $150 a day would be more manageable. For others, $70 a day would enable them to buy services that would keep them out of more expensive nursing home care.
The biggest impediment we've seen to the CarePlus plan is the philosophical objection to government involvement in what has been a universe of privately offered insurance.
Yet it's obvious that any family that can't afford the insurance will have to spend down its assets until it can qualify for Medicaid. That's not government involvement?
Most people, we think, would prefer to rely on their own resources so they can select the most appropriate form of care for their loved one. The CarePlus plan, in a modest way, would promote that flexibility and reduce in a meaningful way the government involvement that its opponents are so concerned about.
What should have been a discussion of the best way to help our skyrocketing population of elderly Islanders has become a polarized, dogmatic, finger-pointing affair, and that helps no one.
