Employee Perspectives on Long-Term Care
Speaker: Bridget Bearden
Topic:
The Employee Long-Term Care (LTC) Survey, fielded in late 2024, examined employees’ awareness of, access to, and perspectives on LTC financing. Findings from the survey of 2,445 workers ages 20–74 uncovered emerging insights while also reaffirming well-established trends in LTC awareness and preparedness.
A significant share of employees either said they expect to need long-term care or had caregiving experience, yet awareness, planning, and benefit take-up (where offered) remained low, with many workers underestimating costs of care, unsure how to access services, and mistakenly expecting Medicare or Medicaid to cover future care. Employees’ perceptions of their LTC needs are strongly influenced by personal experience and socioeconomic status, highlighting an opportunity for employer-informed, public-private solutions paired with targeted education efforts.
As part of a series of tradeoffs between different coverage designs and tax implications for a potential LTCI program, employees were asked to choose between front-end and catastrophic coverage options. Fifty-eight percent of employees selected catastrophic coverage, while 42 percent chose front-end coverage.
The report is available at https://www.ebri.org/financial-wellbeing/publications/issue-briefs/content/employee-perspectives-on-long-term-care
About the Speaker:
Bridget Bearden is a Research and Development Strategist and member of the leadership team at the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). She helps to establish new strategic partnerships, expand membership, execute proprietary survey research, and contribute to EBRI’s in-person events. Her current research projects include EBRI’s biannual Spending in Retirement Survey, and examining benefits that can improve women’s financial security, like on-demand pay, long-term care, and caregiving. She has nearly two decades of experience in developing research and thought leadership in retirement and investing. She has a Ph.D. and MS in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts Boston, an MBA in Finance from Suffolk University, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Connecticut.
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