Long Term Care (LTC) does not mean nursing homes, assisted living centers, and home health care. It means that someone needs assistance and someone to provide that assistance. LTC means that the need for assistance will extend beyond thirty days. It means that regardless of age you might need someone to care for you. Traffic accidents, industrial mishaps, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other catastrophes happen to people every day, leaving thousands of people disabled. These unfortunate people require LTC. If you pick up the newspaper almost any day you will read about a person in their 20s or 30s that just had a heart attack or a stroke. You don’t get over a stroke like you get over a cold. You need rehabilitation and that takes time. A long time.
Do more older people need long term care? Sure. As over 70,000,000 Baby Boomers turn 65 there will be a need beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. We’re talking about one person in four in America today will be turning 65, and that doesn’t address the war babies and other folks that are already retired. Remember what happened to school systems all over the country when the Boomer generation started growing up? We built more new schools every year for two decades, now we have closed over half of them. If there are enough facilities for the Baby Boomers how will we staff them?