This morning I found an article on Senator Kennedy's bill on health care reform. According to this article, "Americans would be able to buy long-term care insurance from the government for $65 a month under a provision tucked into sweeping health care legislation that senators will begin considering next week."

The frightening thing about this is that Long Term Care (LTC) insurance was not even included in the President's forecast of $1.6 trillion. I saw this and I said, "Does the good Senator truly want to put us on the fast track for bankrupting the United States?" An estimated 10 million Americans currently need LTC. That number is expected to double by 2030 (footnote 1).

The problem with the cost is that the average cost of daily personal care is $7,000 per month (footnote 2). Of course they are couching it as a modest benefit to start (not to be less than $1,500 per month but it doesn't state the maximum). However, these things grow and receive a life of their own. So you, through the government, are going to take on the cost burden (we will assume they negotiate down prices and have a limited monthly maximum benefit of $3,000) on average, $3,000 per month per enrollee or $36,000 annually per enrollee. Do the math. It's not pretty. Can you see how these things can mushroom cloud into something so much larger than they initially tell you?

My favorite was this part:

"Both plans omitted specifics on how to cover the costs, which could exceed $1 trillion over 10 years (see footnote 3)." Also, why didn't they say "which could exceed $1.6 trillion?" $600,000,000,000 is a lot of money to not include in their article.

They must think we are either stupid, not listening, or we won't get involved. Let's prove them wrong on all of the above.

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Footnotes

1. Georgetown University, Long Term Care Financing Project, "National Spending for Long-term Care Fact Sheet," January 2007

2. Chicago-Sun Times, "The Savage Truth on Money" by Terry Savage, Monday, March 31, 2008

3. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090610/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_overhaul;_ylt=AoA0E6i2EyEL4ndNzgwOzf6yFz4D;_ylu=X3oDMTJuOWk4YzlvBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNjEwL3VzX2hlYWx0aF9vdmVyaGF1bARwb3MDMQRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA2tlbm5lZHloZWFsdA--