With broad bipartisan support and nary a discouraging word, a key House committee approved legislation Thursday that would enable all federal workers and retirees to buy cut-rate long-term health care coverage-at their own expense.
Three years in the making, the bill (H.R. 4040) zoomed through the usually contentious Government Reform Committee by a voice vote and was sent to the House floor with a strong endorsement by both parties. It is expected to be brought up for debate and certain passage before the mid-April Easter recess.
Under the joint sponsorship of Reps. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the bill directs the Office of Personnel Management to invite bids from private insurers to offer the coverage at discounted group rates for civilian and military employees and retirees. It also permits the policyholders to extend the coverage to their spouses and children, including adopted children, stepchildren and stepparents.
"This employer-group approach should allow federal employees to realize 15 to 20 percent savings in the rates they pay for the policies," Cummings said.
Scarborough said rates should reflect "keen competition among the insurance carriers in bidding" for the coverage contract with OPM. Nursing home care now costs, on average, about $50,000 a year for adequate coverage. In a decade, Scarborough said, the cost could soar as high as $97,000.
Under private coverage as it now exists, the rates for long-term care vary widely, depending on the number and duration of benefits and, perhaps most importantly, the age at which a person secures the policy. As with life-insurance rates, long-term care is least expensive the younger the policyholder.
Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md., who insisted on inclusion of active and retired military persons in the legislation, said the typical 65-year-old retiree can expect to live 20 more years. "About one in four will require nursing care at some point in their later years," she said.
In his successful push for extension of the coverage to spouses, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said federal workers could shield their families from catastrophic economic loss if one marriage partner had to go into a nursing home, leaving the other to run the household.
Scarborough said he hoped congressional adoption of the bill, which President Clinton is likely to sign, would spur private employers to bargain with long-term care insurers to get discounted rates for their employees.
As it stands now, most Americans in need of nursing-home care usually end up, after exhausting their own financial resources, on Medicaid, a federally-funded health care program. Last year, Medicaid cost federal taxpayers about $33 billion, and is expected to rise in tandem with the increasing numbers and life-spans of elderly citizens.