CLASS vs. CCA

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-07-20 16:00:00 UTC
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While the Community Choice Act (CCA) remains ignored, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act has been marked up for inclusion in health care reform. The CLASS Act being marked up isn't in and of itself isn't bad, but the contrast--and perhaps interconnectedness--with the CCA being ignored is problematic.

This blog post contains a press release from ADAPT criticizing the support of the CLASS with no mention to the CCA.

Originally the two acts were supposed to be related. CLASS essentially enables individuals who currently have good employment (middle class and above) to save money out of their pay checks for long term supports later on. CCA essentially ends the institutional bias of medicaid so that when those individuals need the supports--as well as (more importantly to the topic of this blog here) low income or non-working individuals who currently need the supports--will be able to get those supports from the community instead of being forced into a nursing home or institution. This doesn't just make financial and ethical sense, it's literally the law. The comments are at least as interesting as the original post. Especially worth reading is the one about benefits bias from Mark Romoser (who also always has an interesting comment worth reading here).

This blog post contains a brief summary of current events with the CLASS act. What's interesting about this post isn't the post itself as much as the second comment about the costs of long term care--and the concept that what people would pay out for the CLASS Act might not actually cover their true long term care costs.

Yet more pieces of the bigger picture.

Dora Raymaker
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