NO on I-2124: Here’s Why
Washington is one of the best states in the nation for aging, largely because of community-based care services and new resources like our state’s first in the nation long-term care benefit, the WA Cares Fund.
A lot of folks assume that their health insurance, or Medicare, will cover long-term care if we need it. They do not. The vast majority are financially unprepared to cover expenses of support should we need help with daily living tasks like dressing, bathing, getting around, managing meals, and medication.
Starting last year, more than 3 million workers in Washington began building our WA Cares benefits. The average income earner contributes just $300 a year, only while we are working, and benefits start at $36,500 and continue growing with inflation to an estimated $58,300 in 20 years, even after we retire and stop making contributions. We can tap this benefit to pay for home care, medical equipment, and home modifications like ramps, grab bars, or a walk-in shower, should we experience debilitation due to a serious injury, illness, disease, or the normal limitations that can come as we age.
Caregiver stock photo / iStock
But this safety net is now the target of Initiative 2124, one of three ballot initiatives financed by conservative hedge fund mogul Brian Heywood. The initiative is misleadingly framed as a reasonable change—allowing anyone to opt out, making the program voluntary. But experts say the actual impact should I-2124 pass would be to bankrupt the program. The initiative is a deceptive attempt to take away an essential benefit from 3.5 million Washingtonians.
Norma B. Coe, former UW School of Public Health Professor, explained: “Making long-term care insurance voluntary will guarantee that it is unsustainable. Premiums will rise, take-up will drop, and the cycle will continue until there is no longer a program. This is not a vote about voluntary participation; this is a vote about the program’s existence.”
The fact is that a serious injury, accident, disease, or other challenge will leave 70% of us needing help with basic daily living activities, but the vast majority of us don’t have a way to pay for that care. Most folks have less than $5,000 in savings. And when we have to cut back or quit our job to care for a loved one, our income plummets while we take on increased expenses associated with caregiving supplies and services.
If Initiative 2124 is approved, our only choices will be to pay out of pocket for care, drain our savings and assets to qualify for Medicaid, or pay expensive premiums for a private corporate long-term care insurance policy. A recently released analysis of consumer complaints filed with the Office of Insurance Commissioner reveals long-term care insurance companies have poor consumer track records, regularly hiking premiums or reducing benefits, and delaying or denying benefit claims.
Gifford Jones, a retired airline pilot in Seattle, and his wife bought private long-term care insurance policies twenty years ago. Back then their premiums were about $5,000 a year. Every few years the company has hiked their premiums substantially to more than $12,000 a year today. If they stop paying in, they forfeit their benefit and lose the more than $100,000 they have paid in.
Unlike regular health insurance, private long-term care insurance companies can and do deny people based on their health and pre-existing conditions.
Kim Allen, a patient advocate with UW Medicine, researched long-term care insurance in order to protect her retirement savings. She was rejected for a long-term care policy because she had a pre-existing condition, like more than half of us do.
Like Social Security and Medicare, Washington’s long-term care benefit is a safety net. Whether you are the person who needs care or the one who becomes a caregiver for a family member, we all benefit when we can afford the care we need to stay in our own homes. And the WA Cares Fund has been improved to cover near retirees and allow us to keep our benefits even if we move out of state someday for family, work, or retirement.
By effectively killing WA Cares, I-2124 directly harms:
People with pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, asthma, or other
Women, who most commonly take on family caregiving at the expense of their own income and ability to save for future needs
Middle-income working families, the vast majority of whom do not have a nest egg to pay for long-term care needs, and would have to drain their assets to qualify for Medicaid.
Judith Bendersky, MPH, and certified health education specialist in Olympia says:
“Long-term care is one of life’s biggest expenses that no one wants to think about or plan for. Everybody wants to stay at home and remain as independent as possible, and that is what Washington’s long-term care benefit aims to help with. Initiative 2124 is misleading and would rollback protection for our health and our economy.”
