Description: Presented at the Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. Long-term care LTC insurance is frequently not covered by national social insurance programs. When costs are expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product, the future burden of financing LTC would not lead to unbearable tax levels and is not particularly large in comparison to the projected costs for pensions and health care. After identifying the breadth of definitions of LTC needs, it is argued that LTC is an insurable risk. The paper concludes that LTC social insurance is affordable in developed countries.

Description: This paper proposes, for long-term care, a new funding model in which social insurance and private insurance will pay for the bulk of the costs, supplemented by personal payment. If these sources fail, public welfare will serve as a safety net.

Description: Presented at the Living to 100 Symposium, January 2011. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports 'CLASS' Act’s designers and promoters envision the program as a noble plan to relieve the financial strain on Medicaid long-term care and enable disabled and elderly Americans to purchase more home care and suffer less nursing home institutionalization. This paper explains why CLASS, like private long-term care insurance, is doomed to failure unless and until the crowd-out effect of easy access to Medicaid LTC benefits is addressed.

Description: This paper explores how an intragenerational funding approach might spread the risks from those older persons who live longer to those who do not live so long and from those who are healthier or less dependent to those who are less healthy or more dependent.