Knee-Jerk Repeal Guarantees Costly Federal Spending

Here is one for the books. The Democrats create a 100% private-sector solution to long-term care, the most costly health care crisis affecting the American people, and the Republican House has just repealed it. The Republican repeal of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is going to go down as a historic blunder.

The Obama Administration put the CLASS Act into the Affordable Care Act knowing that we can't do without it, but after studying all the cost factors, informed Congress that it was suspending implantation of the CLASS Act. Why would the House go further and repeal a privately financed long-term care insurance program?

The long-term care crisis is already here, but Medicaid pays for it in a hefty nursing home entitlement. Today, the federal government picks up the cost for seniors who need nursing home care once they have spent down their own resources. Only 8% buy long-term care insurance. Cost, recession, and people's near-term priorities promise a continuation of this trend. The House should have hearings to figure out how to make long-term care affordable and how to encourage people to buy their own long-term care insurance.

This irrational, ideologically driven, reflexive reaction means that when the crisis comes, the elderly are going to come to Congress. They are going to say they have no long-term care, and they will demand what the prior generation had: spend down your resources and then Medicaid picks it up. That's the solution on the table now. The CLASS Act, which is law, avoids government subsidies.

The House repeal is so self-destructive that I do not believe that the Senate will follow suit. There is nothing to be gained by repealing a dormant law that cannot be implemented now. When the baby boomer voting bloc becomes elderly and are demanding 100% government Medicaid-funded, long-term care, it will be too late to respond with the 100% privately funded CLASS Act program.