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“Police Say Nursing Home Resident Killed 2 With Arm of Wheelchair”

April 26, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

The breaking news that immediately seized my eye on the front page of the April 23, 2014 Houston Chronicle was, “Police say nursing home resident killed 2 with arm of wheelchair.”

The murders took place at Lexington Place nursing facility.

This is an article I wrote about Lexington Place. I’ve been there a few times and have toured it. The article was published in an insurance trade magazine in August, 2011.

What’s interesting is that hardly anyone ever comments on my blogs or online articles. This had been the case with all the articles I wrote for this magazine, except for this one, which described a few aspects of life inside Lexington Place. This particular article motivated many peers from all over the country to comment, all in positive ways. They all thanked me for telling the story straight.

According to my source, almost all of Lexington Place’s residents were/are Medicaid recipients. That means that Lexington Place was/is in a particularly precarious situation. Medicaid reimburses at rates that are beneath what it actually costs to provide care for nursing home patients.

If you search this website for “nursing homes”, you’ll find much factual information on why nursing homes are suffering. Essentially, most Medicaid-funded nursing facilities are the red and continue to suffer funding cuts.

Here, I opine: there is something about money being in short supply that causes businesses to panic. Then fear sets in. Then dysfunctional management occurs. This is what I believe occurred at Lexington Place.

I believe Lexington Place admitted people it probably shouldn’t have, in hopes of keeping its census high. If funding gets cut, a volume approach is often the remedy, whether this makes sense in the big picture, or not.

I believe, based on information I was given by a trustworthy former employee there, that Lexington Place is also woefully understaffed. That is what I was told, that’s what I reported in my August, 2011 story.

My question remains: if people complained about the murderer’s violent tendencies, why was his behavior not dealt with in a more reasonable manner?

The murderer bludgeoned his victims with the arm of a wheelchair. I presume the deaths were not sudden, but rather, drawn out in a process involving screaming, for quite a while. Where were the caregivers?

I think the answer to the above question must be screaming similar to that of the murder victims is a normal occurrence at Lexington Place.

Long-Term Care Insurance is Good for America!

April 9, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

I want to share part of a powerful address that Tom McInerney delivered at the recent Society of Actuaries Long-Term Care Conference. His talk had great impact on me.

Mr. McInerney is the CEO of Genworth Financial, a leader in the long-term care insurance (LTCi) marketplace. He stated the federal government faces at least $40-70 trillion in entitlement liabilities (Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid). A 2009 GAO Report supports a $45 trillion number. A more recent Heritage Foundation report estimates $45 trillion for Social Security and Medicare alone. All three of these programs are “Pay-As-You-Go”, which means they need to be paid for through current payroll or income taxes.

Our current federal tax revenues are $2.7T per year (see CBO Report FY 2013 estimate). If you add $40 – 70 trillion of entitlement to our existing $17 trillion deficit, even a doubling of taxes, which would further slow our economy, wouldn’t put much of a dent on the public sector’s true liabilities of $60 – 80 trillion! To add to this dilemma, we currently have a ratio of fewer than three workers per retiree supporting Social Security. According to the Social Security Administration, this ratio gets worse every day.

Let me add that our legislators know that Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid need reform urgently. But for their own reasons, neither party will broach this subject. I have blogged about this here and here. With each passing day, the entitlement crisis grows worse, and Mr. McInerney states that counseling that we should rely exclusively on a taxpayer-funded solution to pay for long-term care in the US is irresponsible. I don’t think it’s irresponsible. I think it is off-the-deep end unrealistic and irrational to believe publicly paid long-term care is possible! Yet such irrational, “feel good” solutions seem to prevail.

Here’s a blog that gives an example of the prevalence of such irrational points of view. It’s called “Reaming Diane Rehm“. During her show on long-term care, Diane Rehm paid most of her attention to a supporter of government paid long-term care. She did not have a single representative of the insurance industry on this show, yet plenty of time was spent smashing and bashing LTCi. I pointed out some of the many false and irrational statements made on this show in a professionally written letter I sent to Diane Rehm by surface mail and email; I never even got an acknowledgement from her or her staff.

Meanwhile, Americans haven’t saved enough to cover their long-term care costs. The private long-term care insurance market can’t cover everybody, but it can cover some of us. The more LTCi policies issued, the less pressure on Medicaid budgets and other entitlement spending in the future.

I Am Scared about the Fate of Nursing Homes

January 6, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

It’s the end of the year, and I’m pelted with solicitations to donate to various charities. I feel bad enough having to make the visceral decision to toss most of the requests into the trash, even though I support just about all of the soliciting charities. I feel especially bad about the fate of one charity in particular: Seven Acres.

I gave a larger than average end-of-year donation to Seven Acres, the Jewish nursing home here in Houston. It has a reputation of being top notch. When I call Seven Acres top notch, I mean that only in relative terms. It is as top notch as possible for a Medicaid-accepting, money-losing nursing facility. I have heard from friends with loved ones at Seven Acres that there are too few caregivers so loved ones often wait a long time for help to come. Seven Acres staff strongly encourages families to hire their own, privately paid, additional caregiver.

Here are just a few of the blogs I’ve done on the unsustainable state of long-term care (LTC) finance in the US: /?s=nursing+home. Because Medicaid pays less than it actually costs to provide care, most facilities run in the red. This causes them to cut corners on the quantity and therefore, the quality of care they can provide.

In its annual solicitation letter, Seven Acres states that in 2013, it “provided over $8 million in charitable care to over 85% of its resident population who rely solely on inadequate Medicaid funding.”

I feel bad knowing that my donation is a drop in the bucket and will not help with Seven Acres’ over all financial problems. Increased demand will cause Seven Acres to continue to run in the red, in what may be a downward spiral. My donation will have no effect on making the changes, and reform, that will be necessary to preserve Medicaid-paid long-term care for our most vulnerable citizens. It will also have no effect on making political changes that are necessary to gain control over our country’s out-of-control Medicaid expenses.

The moral: take charge of your own future dignity and choices with a reasonably priced LTC insurance policy.

New Studies Measure State Long-Term Care Vulnerability

December 23, 2013 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Could it be that after decades of steadfast battle to be heard, Steve Moses, President of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform, is finally being listened to and sought after? Glory be!

I guess the timing is finally right. Governments on state and national levels realize how rapidly time is running out before the predominantly government-paid system of long-term care (LTC) we’ve complacently become accustomed to, implodes.

The Center for Long-Term Care Reform, which Steve runs, has been recently commissioned by GA, VA and NJ to study and produce indexes that measure long-term care vulnerability. If people will stop, look, and digest the results, they are terrifying.

The great thing about the recently published GA and VA studies and the indexes of long-term care vulnerability they produced, is that legislators and policymakers (and anyone else interested) now have analytical tools that will help assess and quantify the future sustainability of their state’s long-term care service delivery and financing system.

Here’s a link to the GA Study: http://www.georgiapolicy.org/ftp_files/IndexofLong-TermCareVulnerability.pdf. The index of long-term care vulnerability is found on pages 27-28.

More information about the studies and about the Center for Long-Term Care Reform may be found at: www.centerltc.com.

Studies Explain Why Americans Won’t Plan for Their Long-Term Care

December 23, 2013 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

My prior blog describes two recently published studies, commissioned from the Center for Long-Term Care Reform. For those of us who study long-term care financing, the studies are quite frightening. They quantify how economically vulnerable states are for long-term care (LTC) expenses. The studies were for GA and VA, and a forthcoming study will examine NJ. More information on these studies may be found at the Center for Long-Term Care Reform.

An op-ed piece for the Columbia County News-Times, by Steve Moses, president of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform, was published on December 11, 2013. In his piece, Steve describes how easy it is for a citizen with business savvy and means to get the government, through Medicaid, to pay for their long-term care. Even though publicly funded long-term care is of inferior quality, it is “free”, or rather, it is free only at the expense of taxpayers, while the citizen often preserves much of their wealth though clever legal strategies.

The fact that it is fairly easy to get the government to pay for long-term care anesthetizes the public and prevents it from responsibly planning for long-term care in advance, with long-term care insurance (LTCi). But the gimmicks for free LTC will certainly backfire as more states confront the dilemma of greater demand for Medicaid funds than they can possibly meet, and when the seniors who manage to get into Medicaid nursing homes become aware of the miserable environment in which they will spend the rest of their lives. In stark contrast, someone who needs LTC and owns LTCi will have many more options and access higher caliber care. Studies show LTCi owners also access care sooner, and with less panic and emergency than Medicaid (Welfare) recipients.

Here’s a link to the study done for Georgia: www.georgiapolicy.org/ftp_files/IndexofLong-TermCareVulnerability.pdf.

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“Police Say Nursing Home Resident Killed 2 With Arm of Wheelchair”

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