CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program, was canceled this week from the Obama health care plan. Long Term Care includes not only nursing homes, but such services as home health aides for disabled people.
The Class Program was suppose to be launched in 2012, it was a program sponsored by the government, but was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to the working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable amount of monthly premium during their careers and could collect a daily cash benefit of at least $ 50 , if they com disabled later in life. The money would go for services at home or to help with nursing home bills. One of the requirement was that workers had to pay at least five years in the system before collecting any benefits.
The plan design of the CLASS plan, allowing anyone even the one with severe health issues to enroll required that a large amount of healthy people were willing to sign up. Monthly premium would have ranged from $ 235 to $ 391, even as high as $ 3000 under some of the scenarios. Healthy people who can find in the private insurance industry lower rates were unlikely to sign up, and with that the CLASS plan was not functional and would eventually require a taxpayer bailout.
With the failing of the CLASS plan, which was calculated to be reducing the federal deficit $ 80 billion over the the next 10 years, it will be interesting to see how it will impact the federal budget deficit, which will still have the biggest challenge in 2014 with the implementation of the health care reform.
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