Karen Thurman: “I want to talk, first of all, a little bit about long-term care and what it means to folks in and around. One reason was…”

“I want to talk, first of all, a little bit about long-term care and what it means to folks in and around. One reason was mentioned just about nursing home care, but there are other reasons for long-term care. We are talking about home health care, we are talking about people that might want assisted living, areas that many of our seniors are moving in those directions today. We always want to think that we give them the best quality. So over the years, the Congress has talked about this issue. We also, in the last year or so, were able to pass on to retirees from the Federal Government, as well as Federal employees that are now serving, the ability to buy long-term care. It just seems to me that in some ways, we need to be starting to work with those folks that are 44, 50 years old, so they can start looking at ways to plan for their retirement, and so that they are not dependent on their families for the cost of this. Because that has a negative effect on the families that they are trying to put through college or that they are trying to help to buy their first home, or to do the things that all of us want to be able to do for our families without burdening them with us, who might end up needing some long-term care.”