WhoWhatWhy80%
Washington State Launches First-in-the-Nation Long-Term Care Insurance Program 24%
By Glenn Daigon42%
7/23/2026, 4:00:30 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Hasty Generalization, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 13.4% saturation with 195 hits. Analysis detected 1,357 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,460 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36.6% and a BS Rank of 24% (16,747 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 76.50% of the article peer group.
Christina Keys, caregiver to her elderly mother in Washington state, told me about her family’s experience:
One day my mom is at the movies with her friend, laying hardwood floors in her house, and everything is going great and the next thing you know, she passes out, hits her head on the side of the couch, and has a massive stroke.
She needed multiple pieces of medical equipment — a wheelchair, a hospital bed, a walker — all kinds of things.
Medicare did not cover having a ramp built so she could get into the house.
It didn’t cover having the modifications done to her house, and the grab bars, and the bathroom so her wheelchair could fit in there.
Such predicaments are far from uncommon.
But for hard-pressed working-class families like Keys’s in Washington, help may be on the way.
In 2019, the Legislature passed and the governor signed into law a new long-term public care insurance program called WA Cares.
With Medicare covering few long-term care expenses, this new program may provide crucial relief for residents not able to afford expensive private long-term care insurance or who make too much money to qualify for long-term care benefits under Medicaid.
There are few benefits having broader scope.
It is estimated that 7 in 10 state residents will need long-term care at some point in their lives.
Even though WA Cares is just now getting off the ground, there are signs that popular support for it is consolidating and that other states may use it as a model should it live up to its potential.
The seven-year delay between the law’s passage in 2019 and its implementation this year can be explained in part by its lack of portability.
As originally written, if someone paid into the fund, then moved out of state, they would not have been able to access its benefits.
In 2023, the Legislature delayed the start by 18 months in response to these concerns.
In 2024, a legislative revision made benefits portable.
WA Cares is funded by a mandatory 58 cents deduction from every $100 of the paychecks of Washington workers.
State residents are eligible for benefits under this program to help pay for the following long-term expenses :
In-home health care aides to help people with moving around the house, bathing, meals, medications, and more
Home modifications such as wheelchair ramps, grab bars, and bathroom retrofits so people can stay safe at home
Equipment to help people move around, bath chairs, emergency communication devices
Family caregivers who help their loved ones with personal care needs
In-home meal delivery for people who can no longer cook
Transportation for people unable to run errands or get to medical appointments
Care supplies like adult briefs and hygiene aides
Residential facilities such as a skilled nursing home, assisted living facility, or adult family home
Most workers in the state will have access to these benefits after 10 years of payroll deductions.
Under WA Cares, the current cap on lifetime benefits is $36,500.
However, the cap is indexed to the yearly inflation rate.
If, for instance, inflation averages 2.5 percent a year, the benefit amount is projected to increase to $43,387.03 by 2033.
Caught in the Middle
Kristin Hyde, a spokesperson for We Care for WA Cares, a coalition of organizations working to make long-term care more affordable in Washington, told WhoWhatWhy :
Very wealthy people can afford to cover care expenses out of pocket or pay the expensive premiums for private LTC [long-term care] insurance.
Very low to no income individuals can qualify for Medicaid to pay for long-term care.
WA Cares benefits will help the vast majority who are middle and lower income.
But working-class Washington residents and senior citizens are not the only potential beneficiaries of WA Cares.
Keys noted that as long as you are over 18 years old and have paid into the program, you could receive benefits.
“You could be 25 years old and get hit by a bus.
Or you go in for a simple medical procedure and something goes wrong,” she said.
Indeed, if you have paid into the program a minimum number of years, and you need assistance with three or more of the following activities of daily living, then you could qualify for benefits:
Medication management
The program’s benefits are not limited to the individuals receiving the state funding.
Justin Gill, president of the Washington State Nurses Association , told WhoWhatWhy :
The health care costs for everybody go up when we have preventable, very high cost, episodic care, from injuries that are sustained at home or complications that occur at home from missing medications, or wound care, skin infections, that type of thing.
When we look at just the cost of care, and the rise of the cost of care, if we can do anything to prevent those costly, episodic, low clinical outcome visits, that actually has benefits for everybody in the health system, not just folks that are accessing the benefits itself.
There are indirect and direct benefits for the community and folks in general.
Advocates further cite indirect benefits to those who are not principal recipients of the program’s benefits.
Hyde asserted that by ensuring that people have the resources they need to access long-term care, this in turn will have a ripple effect on the long-term care workforce.
She stated increased access will both increase the pool of professional and family caregivers to meet the rising demand and raise awareness of the importance of caregiving and the need to place value on a trained workforce of skilled home care aides.
Finally, supporters of WA Cares cite another nonfinancial benefit of the program: The program offers guidance for families on what services and resources would best meet their caregiving needs.
Keys described the panic she felt after her mother had a stroke:
This is a game-changing incident that has happened.
It’s changing her life and my life, and I’m trying to figure it out with Google when I don’t even know some of the medical terms.
I feel like no one should be making major financial decisions when they are in a crisis mode.
And this [WA Cares’s guidance] would have been of great value to me — to call somebody who says “Hey, here’s the resources you need.
This is how you walk through this.
These are some of the things you could spend money on.
Here’s some nonprofits that’ll help you out.”
“They are not going to say, ‘Here’s $36,000.
Figure it out yourself.’
People don’t know what to look for,“ added Keys.
Not a Cure-All, But Meeting a Critical Need
Like any major policy program, this one is not lacking for critics.
One criticism is that with yearly cost of some home care aides running over $100,000, the current WA Cares lifetime benefit cap of $36,500, even though it will be adjusted for inflation, is inadequate as far as making long-term care affordable.
Gill responded that the program was not designed to comprehensively cover all long-term care costs.
Instead, it was designed to address more immediate needs like installing grab bars in bathrooms and making the hiring of home care aides for the short term affordable.
Hyde concurred with Gill’s point.
“ Fewer than 20 percent of long-term care recipients are categorized as having high intensity/severe needs or need care for longer than three years.
Sixty percent of folks have a low or moderate need of support,” she said.
Some opponents of the program objected to forcing all workers to pay into the program via the mandatory payroll tax deduction.
They argued it should be voluntary, up to the consumer.
In fact, an initiative was placed on the ballot before Washington voters allowing state residents to opt out of both the program and paying the payroll tax to fund it.
The measure was defeated in November 2024 by an 11-point margin.
“This was a validation of the program,” said Gill.
He stated that Washington voters saw through this attempt to kill the program by making it voluntary.
WA Cares began issuing its first benefit payments to eligible Washington residents on July 1 .
A Model for Other States?
Over 12 states are considering long-term care legislation modeled on Washington state’s — a trust fund financed through mandatory payroll deductions.
“I can tell you as a family caregiver advocate, I work with family caregivers all across the United States, in every situation.
Whether it’s caring for somebody who’s blind, with mental health issues, with Alzheimer’s.
They would kill for this type of program, and there’s nothing in the states that [currently] do that,” said Keys.
Washington State Launches First-in-the-Nation Long-Term Care Insurance Program originally appeared on WhoWhatWhy
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