People who love the long-term care profession may feel like suckers sometimes. How does America’s centrally planned, heavily regulated, top-down LTC system treat us like chumps?
It would be hard to have any kind of LTC business without accepting Medicaid. But Medicaid pays less than the cost of providing care, on average. You can’t make up for losses like that by serving more people on public assistance.
So you have to charge private payers more than a reasonable market rate to make up for the Medicaid shortfall. That causes private payers to find creative ways to qualify for Medicaid, a vicious downward spiral. Private-pay census and revenue have dried up, collapsing from half in 1970 to seven percent in 2023.
LTC providers serve the toughest cases, the aged and disabled, who are the biggest LTC users. LTC users are six percent of Medicaid enrollees but they consume 37% of total spending. That should command respect and special attention. But no. The deck is stacked against aged and disabled LTC users and the caregivers who tend to their needs.
The full article can be found in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
