Following months of hand wringing, the Obama administration has decided it’s time to give the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act a decent burial.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced it has halted work on the planned long-term care insurance benefit, finding it too difficult to implement.
The decision probably would have come sooner, but the measure had been projected to cut healthcare spending by $86 billion over the next decade. With the CLASS Act essentially shut down, the White House faces two unpleasant political choices: Find the money someplace else or write off the savings.
“We have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Oct. 14 in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
From the November 01, 2011 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
