In Effort to Pare Medicaid, Long-Term Care Is Focus

By JANE GROSS

Published: June 27, 2005

Congress is holding hearings. The governors have a plan. The Bush administration has named a commission. Insurance companies have weighed in, and so have lawyers and the AARP.

The idea is to restrain the explosive growth in the taxpayers' contribution to the cost of long-term care for middle-class Americans in frail old age by making it harder to qualify for government benefits and shifting costs to individuals and private insurers.