In July, the White House held its sixth Conference on Aging. The conference team took a modern approach to community engagement and reframed the dialogue on aging, by weaving older people—with and without daily needs—into the mainstream of daily American life. This update was greatly needed, and hence, the 2015 White House Conference on Aging succeeded in three important ways.
First, President Obama attended and spoke forcefully on the issues at hand, acknowledging America as an aging and vibrant nation. Second, the conference theme provided leadership on setting a vision to transform how we as Americans can talk respectfully about vulnerable aging and about what people often need for daily supports. Third, the conference moved beyond a D.C. Beltway debate to engaging local communities as well as “grassroots to grasstops” champions. Live video streaming and an active social media presence connected 600 community “watch parties” to the conference, with the hashtag #WHCOA reaching number 3 on Twitter’s trending list that day.
The main topic missing from the day was a clear-eyed discussion of current and future long-term care costs, which is the largest and most unpredictable factor eroding retirement security for individuals and families. Released right after the conference, a new federal issue brief shows that half of Americans who reach age sixty-five will experience severe functional needs in their future at an average cumulative cost of $138,000. Families have few tools to plan for this economic shock resulting from the broken long-term care insurance market and no government option for middle-income Americans. Yet a deeper look at these data demonstrates that long-term care is an insurable risk. Only one-sixth of older adults with severe needs will spend $100,000 or more, out-of-pocket, on long-term care.
Experts agree that our nation’s way of financing long-term services and supports is unsustainable, and new realistic policy options are needed to address this problem, which impacts American families, employers, and state and federal systems. The SCAN Foundation, along with AARP and LeadingAge, is funding a long-term care financing modeling project directed by the Urban Institute and Milliman, Inc. The modelers will estimate the individual and societal impacts of several high-level policy ideas, building from discussions at the Commission on Long-Term Care in 2013 (chaired by the SCAN Foundation’s CEO Bruce Chernof) and from LeadingAge’s Pathways project. Findings from this work will be released in the late fall of 2015 and will provide a new common basis for the next generation of policy discussions on long-term care financing using this new “go-to” modeling resource.
Given the projections of severe functional need that older adults will face, in addition to what younger adults with disabilities already face, it is time for the administration and Congress to use the outcomes of this early “1.0” modeling effort to begin crafting bipartisan solutions to America’s long-term care financing crisis.
It is also time for philanthropy to step fully into this issue by supporting the 2.0 and 3.0 modeling efforts, which policy makers will need to craft a realistic policy package and develop a broad stakeholder base to champion future legislative proposals. Without action from philanthropy, a heterogeneous stakeholder mix, and committed policy makers, one thing is certain: the most expensive, least person-centered option for families, communities, and government is and will continue to be the status quo.
Parts of this post were adapted from “Not Your Parents’ White House Conference on Aging,” by Bruce Chernof, president and CEO of The SCAN Foundation, Perspectives on Aging with Dignity series, July 2015.
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