The Medicare program is designed to provide for medical care, not the cost of long-term care (LTC).

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Their ideas include simplifying and standardizing insurance products, indexing premiums annually instead of requiring carriers to ask for big rate increases every few years, allowing insurers to sell high-deductible plans (where buyers could be responsible for as much as two years of LTC costs), and better educating consumers about the price of long-term care and the limited government resources available to pay for it.

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The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance found in a study that applicants for LTC insurance who were in good health (typically, younger applicants) qualified for discounts of up to 20% a year.

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