LTC Bullet:  Book Contract, Spring Break, Website Guide

Friday, May 10, 2002

Seattle--

***  On June 27, 2002, the National Chamber Foundation will host “A Long-Term Care Symposium for Business:  Creating and Paying for Choices,” at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.  This half-day event will gather senior government and industry leaders to examine the roles of business, government and consumers in preparing for and financing long-term care needs.  The symposium will address how providers, financial services institutions, regulators, and employers can work together to ease the financial burden that accompanies long-term care.  Center for Long-Term Care Financing President Stephen Moses will moderate a panel on "The Road Ahead:  The Financing Of Long-Term Care."  For more information on the event, including the fee to attend, and to register, please call Courtney Vital at (202) 463-5500 or go to http://www.uschamber.com/ncf.  ***

*** New content added today to our LTC Week in Review feature in the donor-only zone includes:

LTC E-Alert #127--Causes of Nursing Home Institutionalization

LTC E-Alert #128--New Nursing Home Quality Measures

LTC E-Alert #129--More Seniors in Debt

LTC E-Alert #130--Medicare "Cliff" Eased

LTC E-Alert #131--New Guide on Choosing an Assisted Living Facility

Be sure to take these one-a-day mental vitamins in the donor-only zone.  How to zone in?  Go to http://www.centerltc.com/DOZ_info.htm for the details, then make your $100 tax-deductible (or more) contribution at http://www.centerltc.com/support/index.htm, and finally email your preferred user name and password to mailto:amy@centerltc.org.  Voila' and eureka, you're in The Zone.  ***

*** We have some last-minute slots available for the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia LTC Graduate Seminars on May 13 and 14, respectively.  These seminars are like a guided tour by the author of the forthcoming book described in the Bullet below.  Call or email Amy Marohn at 425-377-9500 or mailto:amy@centerltc.org to register.  Spend a full day in a small group seminar exploring the hidden reason most people fail to buy LTC insurance, why so many seniors end up in nursing homes on welfare unnecessarily, and how you can do well while doing good and helping to solve a major social problem.  Seminar leader Stephen Moses is widely recognized as an expert and innovator in the field of long-term care.  McKnight's Long-Term Care NEWS named him "one of the 100 most influential people in long-term care."  Seven CE credits approved by the PA Dep't. of Insurance.  ***

LTC BULLET:  BOOK CONTRACT, SPRING BREAK, WEBSITE GUIDE

BOOK CONTRACT:  The Center for Long-Term Care Financing has just signed a book contract with the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, foundation and publisher.  Center President Stephen Moses will author the volume, provisionally titled "The Unnecessary Tragedy of Long-Term Care."  Read the book proposal that persuaded Cato to endorse this project, including chapter summaries, and track our progress on the manuscript in The Zone at http://www.centerltc.com/members/book_proposal.htm.  (You must have a donor-only zone user name and password to access this information.  To qualify for The Zone, go to http://www.centerltc.com/DOZ_info.htm.)  Work on the book will not begin in earnest until after the Center's annual fundraising campaign this Summer.  Every financial contribution to the Center will help to bring this book to life.  Delivery of the manuscript is due September 1, 2003 with an estimated publication date right in the middle of the next Presidential campaign cycle.  Zone in for details.

About the book project, Center President Steve Moses said:  "University libraries are full of volumes and journal articles that insist long-term care insurance is unaffordable, that private insurance will never play a major role in financing LTC, and that the only hope for America's collapsing long-term care system is more government financing.  We will debunk those myths, refute the fallacies on which they're based and build a rock-solid case for private financing and a market-based solution that can protect every American:  rich, poor and in between."

Here's a clip from the Center's book proposal:  "Long-term care service delivery and financing in the United States is already seriously dysfunctional.  Barring fundamental changes in public policy, America's long-term care system will deteriorate further with the aging of the baby-boom generation.  The dominant problems of access, quality, financing, discrimination and institutional bias were caused by well-intentioned, but perversely counterproductive government intervention in the long-term care marketplace.  Nevertheless, virtually all academic and popular writing on long-term care public policy diagnoses inadequate public financing and prescribes expanded government programs.  This book will be different.  It will be the first comprehensive, systematic analysis of long-term care service delivery and financing from a market-based perspective.  It will trace the history of long-term care from the establishment of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965 until the present.  It will show how public financing of nursing home care has squeezed out private (individual and insurance) financing of home and community-based services.  It will explain and answer the analysis and objections of the opponents of private financing.  And it will show how relatively minor, politically acceptable changes in long-term care public policy can eliminate perverse incentives in the current system and solve the challenge of how to pay for an aging society's long-term care in the future."

If you or your company or foundation would like to commission some or all of the research and writing of this book with a targeted contribution or grant to the Center for Long-Term Care Financing, contact Amy Marohn at 425-377-9500 to set up a meeting or conference call.  An appropriate acknowledgement of grants in support of the book project will be made in the published text.  The Center for Long-Term Care Financing also invites commissions and sponsorship for journal articles, in both the trade and peer-reviewed print media.  For example, we've been asked by the professional "Journal of Financial Service Professionals" to prepare an article on Medicaid estate planning and by a major insurance industry trade journal to write a series of articles on LTC service delivery and financing.  We depend on targeted grants and contributions to support such projects.  Although your contribution will not influence the content of the Center's published work, you will receive recognition and acknowledgement in each publication.

Other opportunities to support the Center include LTC Bullet sponsorships, speaking engagements, the LTC Graduate Seminar, the donor-only zone, and plain, old-fashioned, unencumbered contributions.  The Center can only pursue our common mission--universal access to top-quality long-term care for all Americans--with your generous financial support. 

SPRING BREAK

We're going to take a break for the next month or so from LTC Bullets, the LTC Week in Review E-Alerts, The LTC Reader and The LTC Data Base.  In June, we'll be back online with great new material including a report on the innovative German long-term care financing system.  After a short vacation in Eastern Europe, Steve Moses will interview three leading German LTC experts in Berlin, Bielefeld and Heidelberg.  Our thanks to Dr. Joshua Wiener of the Urban Institute, a leading scholar and prolific author on LTC, for helping the Center to locate these scholars and arrange appointments.

WEBSITE GUIDE

So, how can you possibly get through a whole month without the usual barrage of scintillating information from the Center for Long-Term Care Financing?  Never fear, there is a satisfying alternative.  We recommend that you take advantage of this period to dig down more deeply into the wealth of information at http://www.centerltc.org/.

Have you taken a close look at the Center's website lately?  Here's what you will find if you do:

* Scroll down on the home page to find our three major reports in .pdf format:  "LTC Choice:  A Simple, Cost-Free Solution to the Long-Term Care Financing Puzzle," "The Myth of Unaffordability:  How Most Americans Should, Could and Would Buy Long-Term Care Insurance," and "The LTC Triathlon:  Long-Term Care's Race for Survival."  We get rave reviews on these publications, so dig in and enjoy.  Print them out for free or contact mailto:amy@centerltc.org to purchase bound copies for $24.95, $49.95, and $34.95, respectively.  Or $100 for the lot.

* In the same vicinity on the home page, you can take "The LTC Pledge for Baby Boomers."  If you do, you may decide to use "The Pledge" to introduce prospects, clients, colleagues, friends, relatives, the media, your political representatives and anyone else to the key issues of long-term care service delivery and financing.

* Just above The Pledge, you'll find a link to several speeches on various aspects of the long-term care issue.  This resource is a gold mine, especially if you don't do a lot of public speaking and need some ideas to "borrow" in a hurry for a public address.

* Our article titled "Long-Term Care Due Diligence for Professional Financial Advisors" is right there handy too.  Published in the September 2001 issue of the "Journal of Financial Planning," this piece is one of the most popular and appreciated that we have ever done.  Use it to build bridges between insurance agents, attorneys, CPAs and financial planners.  Thanks as always to Fraser Allport, Founder of The Constellation Group in West Hartford, CT, who commissioned the writing and publicaton of this article with a generous grant to the Center.

* Look to the left on the home page and click on "LTC Bullets Newsletter."  Now you've hit the motherlode of data and analysis on long-term care issues.  First, you will find links to the five most recent LTC Bullets we've published.  But don't stop there.

Click to the left on "Archives by Date."  You'll find all 362 LTC Bullets we've published since the Center's founding in 1998 listed by month and year.

Want to research a general topic?  Then click on "Archives by Subject."  There you'll find links to the same Bullets as before, but organized by major subject, and then by month and year.  These are the subject categories and their definitions:

THE LTC PROBLEM AND SOLUTIONS:  LTC Bullets that address or support the arguments fully developed in the Center's major reports:  LTC Choice, The Myth of Unaffordability, and The LTC Triathlon.  Also, analysis of proposals for solving the LTC financing crisis offered by academics, think tanks and others. 

REALITY CHECK: THE FACTS ON LTCI:  Addressing inaccuracies and faulty data that abound in media coverage of long term care insurance.  Includes anecdotes from the popular press that highlight the benefits of planning ahead and taking personal responsibility for long term care.

MEDICAID PLANNING:  The impact on public programs and benefit recipients, the latest court and administration rulings and the effect on the marketability of private long-term care solutions.

LTC SERVICES:  Highlights the link between private financing and quality services. 

POLITICS AND LEGISLATION:  Commentary on the news from Congress, the Administration, HCFA, and the states.  For more analysis on state specific Medicaid programs, see our state reports. 

DEMOGRAPHICS AND OTHER DATA:  The impact of the Baby Boom and discussion of the coming "age wave."  Discussion of resources and data on LTC cost, spending and utilization.

CLTCF NEWS:  What's happening at the Center, press coverage and news releases.

* While you're on the site, click and read some "Endorsements" of the Center, including the one by Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., Founder and President of Age Wave, LLC, author of Age Wave and Age Power: How the 21st Century Will be Ruled by the New Old.

* Click on "Research and Publications" at the top of the home page.  You'll find links to the Center's most recent reports and to summaries of our "state reports," aka "the Magic Bullet" studies.  These state-level reviews provide fascinating insights into the inner workings of the LTC system in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, Wisconsin, Montana, South Dakota and others.

* Click on "Speaker's Bureau" and read about the many prepared programs the Center can deliver for your meeting or conference.  Of course, we will also develop special program's catered to your group's special needs and requirements.

* Finally, if you're inclined to help the Center for Long-Term Care Financing pursue our common mission, click on "Support the Center" to make an online contribution; or click on "How to Qualify for the Zone" to learn about the donor-only zone; or click on "The LTC Graduate Seminar" to get the whole scoop on the most advanced long-term care training program available; or click on "Contact Us" and send us your ideas and suggestions.  We want to hear from you.

That's all for the time being, folks.  See you in June.