Collins Supports Long-Term Health Care
WASHINGTON, Feb. 06–Senator Susan Collins called Wednesday for doubling federal funds for the National Family Caregiver Support Program and reaffirmed her sponsorship of legislation to provide tax breaks to caregivers as ways to make long-term care insurance more affordable for caregivers – especially women.
“The simple fact that women can expect to live as many as seven years longer than their male counterparts puts them at far greater risk of needing long-term care,” Collins said at a Senate hearing on women and aging. “Moreover, not only are women far more likely to need long-term care, but they are also the ones who most often shoulder the burden of providing long-term care to their loved ones.”
The hearing, organized by the Senate Special Committee on Aging and the Aging Subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, focused on ways to provide affordable insurance for those who care for loved ones at the expense of their own financial security and physical health in the future. Seven women senators testified at the hearing in support of increased aid for caregivers.
The fact that women typically still do the majority of caregiving was cited in testimony at the hearing. Collins, who sits on the Aging Committee, pointed to a recent statistic developed by the Older Women’s League that 75 percent of America’s caregivers are women.
“These women suffer disproportionately from our failure to develop a coherent long-term care financing system,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) told the panels. She and others said that these women must sacrifice time when they could otherwise be working and saving money for the future. The baby boomer generation in particular, which is also disproportionately larger than other generations, may face smaller social security retirement benefits.
“In a recent poll of baby boomers,” Collins said in her testimony to the panels, “only 27 percent of women surveyed had more than $100, 000 in their retirement plans; 33 percent of the women surveyed reported having less than $25, 000, an amount that would not even be sufficient to cover one year of nursing home costs.”
The mental and physical side effects for women who devote an inordinate amount of time to caregiving were also a major topic at the hearing.
“In some cases, this emotional stress [of caring for loved ones] leads to depression, which can impair a caregiver’s ability to provide care and also endanger their own health,” Laurie Young, executive director of the Older Women’s League, said in her written testimony.
Young also pointed out that “44 percent of informal caregivers report physical strain as a result of their caregiving activities.”
To combat these financial and health problems for caregivers, Collins proposed “doubling” federal funds for the National Family Caregiver Support Program, which is intended to provide caregivers with information, referrals, training, counseling and respite services. This year’s budget appropriated $141.5 million to the program.
Collins also said that she is joining “a bipartisan group of colleagues in sponsoring the Long-Term Care and Retirement Security Act.” The bill, she said, “will give tax credit for long-term health expenses of up to $3,000 to help families already struggling to provide long-term care for a loved one. It will also encourage families to plan for their long-term needs by providing tax deductions to help them purchase long-term health insurance.”
Published in The Bangor Daily News, in Maine.
