McKnight's July 8, 2024
Senior living’s caregiving sectors — nursing homes, assisted living and home care — share problems and needs in varying degrees. But what they get from long-term care (LTC) research is seldom what would address their problems or meet their needs.
Nursing homes’ biggest problems are excessive dependency on low Medicaid reimbursement aggravated by too much unwarranted regulation, such as mandatory staffing levels. What nursing homes need are policy proposals and advocacy to reduce Medicaid census and increase private, market-rate payers. But is that what the research delivers?
Hardly. Most LTC analysts and special task forces recommend new, compulsory, social insurance programs on the model of Medicare and Social Security. They ignore those aging entitlements’ dubious financial prospects. They never explain...
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