Not Such a CLASS Act: America’s Long-Term Care Problem

Abstract

Long-term care is a serious but largely unrecognized problem in the US. The CLASS Act was a new program embedded within the Affordable Care Act that was supposed to bring relief to disabled individuals and Medicaid, the primary payer for long-term care. However, the program had an unworkable design, and it was eventually abandoned by the Obama administration. CLASS' flaws were largely the product of a policy area in which ignorance and misinformation render any effective and fiscally sound program politically unfeasible. As such, the rise and fall of the CLASS Act highlights the profound challenges facing any attempt to pass serious long-term care reform and underscores the need to raise awareness of America's long-term care challenge.