{"id":7496,"date":"2024-11-07T23:08:11","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T23:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/washington-state-voters-keep-public-long-term-care-insurance\/"},"modified":"2024-11-07T23:08:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T23:08:11","slug":"washington-state-voters-keep-public-long-term-care-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=7496","title":{"rendered":"Washington State Voters Keep Public Long-Term Care Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Walker Methodist resident Minnie Meyer, left, gets a loving touch from Nursing Assistant Devika … [+]<\/span> Swanston. (Photo By JUDY GRIESEDIECK\/Star Tribune via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/fbs-accordion>Star Tribune via Getty Images<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Voters in Washington State have decided to keep the state\u2019s first-in-the-nation public long term care insurance program<\/a>. On Tuesday, they easily rejected a ballot initiative that would have killed the far-reaching law.<\/p>\n

The WA Cares law<\/a> provides up to $36,500 in long-term care insurance benefits, with the amount increasing with inflation. It is funded with a payroll tax surcharge of 0.58 percent on all workers in the state. For a median income worker, who makes about $78,000, that equals about $450 annually, or about $9 a week.<\/p>\n

The initiative was one of four ballot measures sponsored by Let\u2019s Go Washington<\/a>, a conservative political action committee led and largely funded by Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager. With 79 percent of the vote counted, Measure 2124 was failing<\/a> by roughly 55 percent to 44 percent.<\/p>\n

Broad Impact<\/strong><\/p>\n

The defeat likely will have an impact well beyond Washington. States such as California, Illinois, Minnesota, and Massachusetts are exploring t<\/a>heir own public long-term care financing ideas. Had the Washington initiative passed, those states would have had their own second thoughts about the political viability of a universal tax-funded public program.<\/p>\n

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The state initiatives are especially important given Donald Trump\u2019s election as president. While there has been interest in a public long-term care social insurance program among some Democrats,<\/a> it is hard to imagine federal legislation passing with Trump in office.<\/p>\n

Perils Of Voluntary Insurance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington initiative would have made participation in WA Cares voluntary, a seemingly innocuous change. But, unless the state adopted strict medical underwriting, the measure effectively would have killed the program.<\/p>\n

According to one estimate<\/a>, as many as three-quarters of workers in the state might have dropped out, most of them younger, higher-income, or healthier. The program could have become insolvent<\/a> as soon as 2027. Insurance cannot function without a broad risk pool that includes both those who ultimately will need benefits and those who may not ever claim. That is how insurance works.<\/p>\n

Congress enacted a voluntary public program called the CLASS Act in 2010 but it was repealed before even starting because premiums would be unacceptably high. And private long-term care insurance has struggled to remain actuarially sound without significant premium increases because its risk pool is so unstable.<\/p>\n

In reality, more than half of those over age 65 will need a significant amount of long-term care before they die. What makes a tax-funded, universal public program work, and what makes it relatively inexpensive, is that almost no one knows if they eventually will need long-term care when they first start paying into the program, usually in their 20s.<\/p>\n

The First Mover <\/strong><\/p>\n

WA Cares was enacted in 2019. Workers began paying the tax in 2023 and the state will begin paying benefits in July, 2026. It provides a benefit to those who have paid into the system for, generally, at least 10 years. However, there are exceptions for those who have had a serious medical emergency and limited benefits are available to those who have paid into the system for less than 10 years.<\/p>\n

As the first state to adopt a public long-term care insurance program, Washington has had its share of stumbles. A one-time exemption<\/a> for anyone who had purchased private insurance by Nov. 1, 2023 drove hundreds of thousands of state residents<\/a> to buy coverage to avoid the tax.<\/p>\n

Many were low-cost, low-benefit, short-term policies that would provide little support during a normal spell of long-term care needs. And many of those who purchased reportedly have since dropped coverage.<\/p>\n

WA Cares is not without its flaws. I prefer a catastrophic public program<\/a> to a front-end plan such as Washington\u2019s. But it has been a critical first step towards a much-needed public program that helps solve the problem of financing long-term care. Now that the state\u2019s voters have affirmed the program, it will be interesting to see if other states follow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walker Methodist resident Minnie Meyer, left, gets a loving touch from Nursing Assistant Devika … [+] Swanston. (Photo By JUDY GRIESEDIECK\/Star Tribune via Getty Images) Star Tribune via Getty Images Voters in Washington State have decided to keep the state\u2019s first-in-the-nation public long term care insurance program. On Tuesday, they easily rejected a ballot initiative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[1122,292,1121,650,290,2150,2219],"class_list":{"0":"post-7496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finance-news","8":"tag-care","9":"tag-insurance","10":"tag-longterm","11":"tag-public","12":"tag-state","13":"tag-voters","14":"tag-washington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}