Oct 18 2010
The Wall Street Journal: "People with long-term care insurance policies are getting hit with a new round of steep premium increases," which insurers attribute to "policyholders living longer, generating higher claims and canceling fewer policies than they had projected." Companies have applied for rate increases ranging from 10 percent to 40 percent, unaffordable for some of the 8 million Americans who own a long-term care policy. Some states protect policyholders who have experienced large rate hikes to "stop paying premiums altogether, while retaining coverage equal to the premiums they have paid already" (Tergesen and Scism, 10/16).
NursingTimes.net: Marie Curie Cancer Care centers, which are throughout Great Britain, delivered a six-week online "end of life care assessment course" to train nurses in delivering adequate supportive and palliative care. On average, the 30 UK nurses who took the pilot course, which included reviewing and discussing case studies online, said they were more confident in discussing plans with patients and caregivers (10/15).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
|