“Long-term care services are not on the front burner of the Presidential campaign,” begins a recent Forbes article. “They are not on the back burner. They are, it seems, not even on the stove.”
President Obama and Republican candidate Newt Gingrich are the only two out of five candidates surveyed by 15 national advocacy groups to respond to five questions on long-term care, says Forbes, while Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul neglected to answer the survey.
For his part, Obama didn’t have much new to say, as he mentioned past efforts that support home- and community-based care, and noted the CLASS Act’s failure without suggesting an alternative, the article continues.
Gingrich has shown “real interest” in LTC issues in the past, according to Forbes, but his response was more along the lines of advocating for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and enacting major changes to the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
“Give Gingrich (or his staff) credit for thinking creatively–if somewhat inconsistently– about long-term care services,” the article says. “If Obama has any new ideas, he was not willing to share them. As for Romney, Santorum, and Paul, the issue is clearly not important enough for them to assign a staff person to answer a survey. That’s an indictment of both the candidates and the advocates who seem unable to get their attention.”
Read the full Forbes article here.
Written by Alyssa Gerace
