Description: Article on the history of the Long Term Care Discussion Group, a Washington DC-based venue for discussing long-term care and related issues for over 20 years.

Description: Family caregivers are a critical link in providing long-term services and supports (LTSS), but they have significant unmet needs. To better support family caregivers, Congress authorized the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, & Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act in 2018 and created the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council. The Council identified recommendations to serve as the backbone of a national strategy to improve the physical, emotional and financial well-being of family caregivers. A new report, "Asking Directions: Mapping a Course to Support Family Caregivers," identifies specific actions across a variety of players for meeting the Council’s recommendations. It summarizes insights from a year’s worth of strategy sessions and interviews with representatives of over 100 organizations. The report brings together thoughts on best practices and the most critical action steps from national and state organizations, county health providers, the direct care workforce, large and small employers, aging and disability organizations, faith-based groups, respite care providers and more. This article summarizes the research methods and key findings of the report and the work conducted by the Leading Age LTSS Center @UMass Boston and Community Catalyst’s Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation.

Description: Recommendation to measure the risk for the components of combination Life/LTC products.

Description: One of the dangers in any sort of modeling, whether for insurance experience or in financial portfolios, is becoming too reliant upon statistics and models, and not keeping reasoned, experienced judgment in sight. This article provides ways to address adverse experience possibilities resulting from misestimation risk.

Description: The Upside to Higher Persistency in LTC Insurance—Effects of Anti-Selection After Policy Issue By John L. Timmerberg from Long-Term Care Newsletter, September 2004, Issue No. 12.

Description: From the Editor: This issue of Long-Term Care News attempts to address how LTC insurers manage investment risk and morbidity misestimation risks.

Description: To increase awareness of current research, cognitive treatments, brain exercise programs and overall long-term care, we will be adding a regular feature to the LTC Section newsletter, tentatively called the “Cognitive Corner.” This feature will provide a place to share existing academic research and health-related outcomes related to cognitive factors. It is the hope that this information will spur thought-provoking discussions and debates that impact your work regarding these hypotheses.

Description: How does spousal contagion influence long-term care needs? This article provides high-level results of spousal claim analysis and discusses potential implications to the LTC insurance market.

Description: In a recent study, nearly all family caregivers (80%) said they “always” or “often” provide emotional support. What if robots could cut that statistic in half? What would that mean to caregivers who have families of their own? This article is my first-hand experience with a companion robot that provides a tremendous amount of emotional support and meaningful activities. Together, they are designed to engage an older adult significantly which can lighten the caregiving burden on other family members.

Description: As the topic of affordable long-term care (LTC) insurance comes into focus in political conversations, we often find ourselves thinking, “What is going to happen to the private LTC insurance industry going forward?” The need for LTC in the United States is not going away, especially as the population continues to age. With this in mind, this article explores three possible future paths for LTC insurance funding and the associated implications for the private LTC industry.