Despite decades of attention, private long-term care insurance (LTCI) has played only a limited role in financing care in the United States. Looking ahead, can future generations rely more heavily on private insurance?
This session will explore insights gained from two recent studies that suggest that a promising path forward lies in revisiting and strengthening the Partnership Programs currently active in 42 states. These programs are intended to encourage private LTCI uptake by offering asset protection (spend-down protection), allowing individuals who have purchased “Partnership-Qualified” (PQ) LTCI policies to retain additional savings if and when they transition to Medicaid. Specifically, they can retain assets equal to the amount they received in benefits under their PQ private LTCI policy. By aligning public and private interests, Partnership Programs encourage earlier reliance on private insurance, potentially easing Medicaid’s financial burden.
The two studies to be discussed include one (Kopecky and Braun) using an economic model of the US long-term care insurance market under three different scenarios: no Medicaid, Universal coverage, and a Public-Private Partnership style initiative. The study is available at link.
The other study (Coasta-Font and Raut) models the estimated Medicaid savings from the expansion of the Partnership program under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, using data from 2005 through 2016. Their work was published March 2025 in: Health Economics,.
About the Speakers:
Karen Kopecky is an Economic and Policy Advisor in the Research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and an Adjunct Professor in the Economics department at Emory University. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in 2023, Kopecky spent 13 years as a Research Economist and Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and four years as an Assistant Professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario. Kopecky has a BA in economics and a BS in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo and earned both an MA and PhD in economics from the University of Rochester.
Joan Costa-Font is a Professor of Health Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he leads the Ageing and Health Incentives Lab (AHIL). He is the author of the WHO Global Report on Long Term Care Financing (October 2022). Previously, he has been Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, Policy Evaluation Fellow at Sciences Po and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Centre for Health and Wellbeing Princeton University Department of Economics, and a Professor of Economics at the University of Barcelona. He has held research appointments at UCL-Paris Dauphine, Oxford University, and Boston College..
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