Abstract
Paying for long-term care has become a major problem for older people, their families, and society and will be an increasingly serious problem in the future. With increased longevity, many more people face a period of serious disability in old age. Most are cared for informally by relatives and friends, albeit often at great emotional and sometimes financial cost. When the disabled elderly and their families seek more formal home care or nursing home services, they find, often to their surprise and dismay, that long-term care is not covered to any significant extent by Medicare or private insurance. Frequently nursing home patients must use their entire life savings to pay for their care, and once totally impoverished, they must depend on Medicaid, a severely means-tested welfare program.
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© 1988 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Rivlin, A.M., Wiener, J.M., Spence, D.A. (1988). Insuring Long-Term Care. In: Varieties of Aging. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-40050-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-40050-0_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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