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TORONTO—Residents of Ontario’s long-term care homes begged on Tuesday to be allowed outside, saying anti-pandemic restrictions that have confined them indoors for more than a year make no sense given almost all have now been vaccinated. Some compared their situations to solitary confinement, and urged the provincial government to act on what they called a gross violation of their basic human rights. Chuck Ferkranus, a resident of a home in Newmarket, Ont., said no one in the building has COVID-19 and yet residents are stuck in their rooms. Ferkranus, who challenged those in authority to live as he does for...

Every skilled nursing home in Pennsylvania has met the July 24 deadline for testing all residents and employees for COVID-19, the state said Tuesday. Completing that round of tests is a key part of the plan for allowing in-person visits to nursing homes — something that hasn’t happened in Pennsylvania since early March, and which experts say has grave medical consequences of its own. If a facility has zero infections among residents and staff, it can move into the first stage of a three-stage plan for resuming visits. It takes one or more additional two-week periods of no infections before...

I am starting to look for long term care insurance with little success. Most of the plans seem to be cut from the same cloth....they want your money as long as you are young enough with no pre-existing conditions. Would any of you out there have information to share regarding consumer-friendly plans? Thanks in advance.

Long-term care (LTC) for the elderly is already a large risk and expense for private citizens and public programs. The need for and cost of LTC will increase radically with the aging of the baby-boom generation. Most expensive long-term care, including care provided in nursing homes or by professional aides in family homes for more than nominal durations, is paid for by Medicaid, a means-tested public assistance program. Medicaid already strains federal and state budgets, including Virginia’s. Yet major initiatives at the federal level and in Virginia are underway to expand Medicaid coverage in general and to make the program’s...

This policy brief was prepared under contract #HHS-100-03-0022 between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy (DALTCP) and Thomson/MEDSTAT. For additional information about the study, you may visit the DALTCP home page at http://aspe.hhs.gov/_/office_specific/daltcp.cfm or contact the ASPE Project Officer, Hunter McKay, at HHS/ASPE/DALTCP, Room 424E, H.H. Humphrey Building, 200 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20201. His e-mail address is: Hunter.McKay@hhs.gov.

Considering purchase of Long Term Care insurance.

My wife and I are meeting with NW Mutual sales guy in a few hours. I'm 42 good health, no issues. Wife 37, great health. 2 small creepers under 2. Our parents are old. I want to buy LTC sine I don't want to burden my kids or my parents assets in case something happens. My wife is reluctant because of the chaos of Obamacare and the uncertainty of the healthcare industry.

Tucked inside the "fiscal cliff" deal is a provision repealing the CLASS Act, a giant unfunded mandate that was part of President Obama's health care law. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and was designed to create a program for long-term care for the functionally disabled. Mr. Obama halted the program, saying he couldn't find a way to make it cost-effective. But he had objected when Republicans tried to repeal it outright, saying he wanted to keep it on the books and try to amend it...

President Obama is against repealing the health law's long-term care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government's announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water. "We do not support repeal," the official said Monday. "Repealing the CLASS Act isn't necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country." Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called CLASS Act advocates to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the...

Nearly half of the deficit reduction that Democrats claimed when President Obama signed the national health care law would be wiped away by the administration's recomendation against implementing a doomed long-term care program. As Obamacare's critics noted at the time, Democrats' deficit reduction claims were based on a series of accounting gimmicks. One of the most obvious was the inclusion of the Community Living Assistance and Support Services Act, a program that was slated to collect five years of premiums before paying out any benefits. Though it was unsustainable over time, on paper it produced surpluses during the Congressional Budget...

The Obama administration will not implement a controversial piece of the healthcare reform law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday. Sebelius said the department will not continue trying to implement the CLASS program, which was intended to provide insurance for long-term care. Republicans charged that the program’s financial structure was unsustainable, and Sebelius conceded as much Friday. “We have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time,” she wrote on the Huffington Post's website. Sebelius said HHS will “suspend” implementation of the program. The department recently reassigned the people it had placed in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even as leading Democrats offered assurances to the contrary, government experts repeatedly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan could go belly up, saddling taxpayers with another underfunded benefit program, according to emails disclosed by congressional investigators. Part of President Barack Obama's health care law, the program is in limbo as a congressional debt panel searches for budget savings and behind the scenes, administration officials scramble to find a viable financing formula. A longstanding priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS, was spliced into...

Hidden in ObamaCare, Section 8002, is a new payroll tax that will hit paychecks of American employees beginning 01/01/2011. It was placed in ObamaCare to make the legislation appear to cost almost $100 billion less than the true cost. That’s according to Ron Greiner of StopObamaCare101.com,a national medical insurance expert. The program is called the Community Living Assistance Services and Support Program (ironically dubbed: “CLASS Act”). Even the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee (Senator Kent Conrad D-ND) called it, “A Ponzi Scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” (Charles...

Health reform is many things, but not a class act. The reason: the CLASS Act. The legislation signed into law last week includes a provision called the CLASS Act, which provides long-term care at home. Few know about it, but experts agree it could well explode the federal budget deficit down the road. The Act was designed to assist people who need help with daily tasks and are willing to pay for in-home assistance. ... The problem: The plan, as currently constructed, can't possibly pay for itself over the long run and will blow a hole in the federal budget...

I’ve read so little about the Class Act in recent weeks that when President Obama signed the health care bill yesterday, surrounded by a gaggle of happy Democrats, I had to call the National Council on Aging to reassure myself that yes, this often overlooked but potentially transformational program remained part of the package. “It’s the law of the land as of this moment,” asid the council’s president, James P. Firman, still sounding a bit dazed by the whole drama. “And there’s nothing in the reconciliation bill about it, no language in there at all. It’s the law, and it’s...

Inside the House and Senate health care bills lurks a ticking time bomb - a new federal entitlement, under the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, that would allow Americans to buy into a voluntary federal long-term care insurance program. The main problem, as Josh Gordon, policy director for the fiscal-watchdog group the Concord Coalition, noted, is that CLASS, which has passed "below the radar" of most Americans, is a poorly designed "gimmick." While Washington would start collecting CLASS premiums in 2011, CLASS would not pay benefits for five years. So, because it charges for 10 years, but...

The public is growing wary of the cost of ObamaCare. Yet there is one budget-busting provision that hasn't received the attention it deserves: a new long-term care entitlement. Known as the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, or Class Act, this entitlement is in both the House and Senate bills and was a top priority of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. It would provide at least $50 a day toward home or institutional care, equipment and supplies, or home improvements to assist the daily living of those who are enrolled. It is also a significant part of the reason...

Long-Term Letdown by: Emily Miller, July 29, 2008 Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jim McCrery (R-Lou.) met earlier this month to advocate reforming long-term healthcare, an aspect of the healthcare debate both congressmen worry is being overlooked this campaign season. “This program is about making sure that long-term care is not the after-thought, not the forgotten step-child in the debate,” said Sen. Wyden at the Brookings Institution event. Both Congressmen expressed concern about the shortage of primary caregivers in the workplace, a problem likely to worsen over the next decade, according to former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). Kerrey, speaking...

Father drops court appeal over his little girl's fate The fate of a little girl badly injured in a landslide last September will be decided outside of a Norwegian courtroom. Her father and officials at the Bergen hospital where she's lying in a coma have agreed to cooperate. Oddmund Hjartåker has been fighting to prevent doctors at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen from taking his daughter off a life-support system. Four-year-old Kristina Hjartåker has been linked to a respirator since she was buried under mud and rocks in a landslide set off by heavy rain. Her doctors, other hospital...

I have been considering purchasing long-term care insurance for myself as a result of seeing my father's need for 24 hour private duty nurses. The cost of this plus the assisted living facility for him is very high ($150,000/year), but he has a very generous pension (no wonder New York City is always in danger of becoming bankrupt) and also gets half of my deceased mother's pension and social security. Needless to say, I can't count on these sources, although I have been very careful and put money in 401(k), IRA, non-retirement investments, etc. Do any freepers have experience with...