More Needed For Health Promotion And The Elderly!!!

With the first wave of baby boomers starting to sign up for Social Security benefits comes yet another reminder of the needs of America's graying population. Like no time before in American history, the concerns of older Americans are moving to the forefront as the biggest segment of the population advances in age.

One of their chief concerns, of course, is health care. Yet for the most part, it's business as usual. The failure of Congress to overhaul the Medicare health insurance program for seniors is perhaps the most glaring example. Consequently, it's being left to the states to devise new and effective ways to meet the health care needs of boomers and the elderly.

New York, to its credit, was ahead of the pack when it created a program to provide long-term care insurance to residents in 1993. Under the program, New York State Partnership for Long Term care, state residents can prepare for the possibility of needing nursing home care, home care or assisted living services and also protect some or all of their financial assets.

This program, which provides nursing home care for three years before Medicaid kicks in, is good for New Yorkers both individually and collectively. After all, New York's Medicaid program, which has a taxpayer price tag of more than $46 billion a year, is the costliest in the country. The partnership can reduce taxpayer expense by more than $10 billion a year.

The problem, however, is that not nearly enough New Yorkers are enrolled. After more than 15 years, the partnership has only 59,000 enrollees, most of whom are age 62 and older. The state currently spends only about $1.5 million to promote the program, which understandably can be a hard sell. Nevertheless, more must be done to persuade New Yorkers that long-term care insurance makes sense.

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