Long-term care poses health policy challenges

CQ Healthbeat examines how the challenges of providing long-term care services to the nation's aging population are growing. Meanwhile, writing for KHN, consumer columnist Michelle Andrews details a development in the long-term care insurance market.

CQ Healthbeat: The Aging Population: A Crisis In Plain Sight
The stories are ubiquitous and intensely personal. You hear them at work, at dinner parties, at kids' soccer games. Someone's mother, or widowed dad, or favorite aunt, or disabled brother needs long-term care -; and that person has no idea where to turn for help…. Providing long-term-care services and support for the elderly and people with disabilities arguably is the biggest problem in health care policy today (Norman, 2/25).

Kaiser Health News: Insuring Your Health: Key Long-Term-Care Insurer To Raise Women's Premiums
Starting next year, the Affordable Care Act will largely prohibit insurers who sell individual and small-group health policies from charging women higher premiums than men for the same coverage. Long-term-care insurance, however, isn't bound by that law, and the country's largest provider of such coverage has announced it will begin setting its prices based on sex this spring (Andrews, 2/26).