-Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Initiative 2124 would allow state residents to opt-out
of Washington's new long-term care-insurance program.
But advocates say a yes vote could kill Washington Cares.
-We do not think that the state should put a focus
on running its own insurance company
and then requiring everybody to be part of it.
-Critics of Washington Cares,
approved by the legislature in 2019
and put into effect last year,
say the payroll tax for long-term care
is costly and impractical.
-The total lifetime benefit level
is only a little over $36,000,
which for care in a nursing home would only last a few months.
-The tax is expensive and burdensome.
The initiative,
from the Let's Go Washington Political Action Committee,
also points out that 475,000 Washingtonians
opted out of the program when it was first an option
by proving they had bought
qualified private long-term care insurance.
-Most people would like to make other arrangements
or have their own choice.
-We need a benefit like Washington
long-term care benefits.
-But Christina Keys says Washington Cares is critical
and would have made a huge difference if it was available
when her mother had a stroke in 2013.
-It would have changed everything.
We wouldn't have gone from, you know,
middle-class to poverty level in a year and a half.
-She and other advocates say making Washington Cares optional
could effectively terminate it,
which could threaten the lives of 3 million residents
and their family caregivers.
-We're putting in jeopardy not only our folks
who have special needs, our seniors,
the folks who could really benefit by this,
but, also, the people that are caring for them, as well.
-Is a program hailed as the first of its kind
in the nation on its last legs?
-I think it's a scam.
-Our studio panel weighs in.
-Women are actually the ones
who are gonna be most hurt by 2124.
-This initiative gives families choice.
-It hurts families, and it hurts all taxpayers.
-Breaking down a life-and-death decision
on your November ballot with I-2124
next on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
And joining us to speak a little bit more about this issue,
we have with us Brian Heywood.
He is the I-2124 sponsor.
Brian, good to see you. -Great to be here. Thank you.
-We also have with us Representative Nicole Macri,
the Democrat from the 43rd District here in Seattle.
Representative Macri, good to see you, too.
-Good to see you, Brian.
-We also have with us Representative Peter Abbarno,
the Republican from the 20th District,
down in Centralia.
Representative Abbarno, good to see you, as well.
-Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.
-And joining us last, but not least,
Heather Weiner is a spokesperson for the No On 2124 campaign.
Heather, good to see you again. -Hi, Brian.
-Alright. Let's jump into this here.
To begin, I want to try to get some opening statements,
if I could, on your position on this issue.
And, Brian, let me start with you.
Why did you sponsor I-2124,
which would allow state residents to opt-out
of Washington Cares, our long-term insurance program?
-Because I think it's a scam.
The long-term care act --
the intent was, of course, not bad.
It's a good thing to take care of people,
and it's a very expensive insurance.
But what was created was something
that from the beginning was designed poorly.
It was designed so poorly
that Governor Insley had to sort of delay it a couple of years
before the implementation.
Seattle Times came out against it.
In that intervening time, they didn't fix it.
And so it's discriminatory against women.
It's discriminatory against people that take time off.
Especially when I say women,
working moms in particular get hit by this.
And it's not fiscally stable.
And so this is a kind of program I wouldn't want to be a part of.
If I, as a private sponsor, created this program,
I think I would be arrested for insurance fraud.
-Okay.
-And so I want to give a chance to people to opt-out
if they don't think they need it.
-Okay, thanks.
We'll break down some of those issues,
I know, in a little bit.
Heather, why are you saying no to 2124?
Why should people not have the choice
to opt-out of Washington Cares?
-So, I-2124 sounds pretty innocuous.
But according to even insurance-industry experts,
it will bankrupt the program,
taking away benefits from 85% of working Washingtonians.
It's opposed by the Washington State Nurses Association,
League of Women Voters,
Moms Rising, healthcare associations,
even the National MS Society.
And that's because it puts us back at the mercy
of private long-term care-insurance companies,
which can jack up our premiums
and, worse, deny coverage to people
with pre-existing conditions --
everything from cancer to old sports injuries
or, like me, sleep apnea.
So, what I-2124 does
is it hurts 85% of working Washingtonians
and takes away from them a long-term care benefit
that 70% of us are probably going to need.
-Okay. Thank you for that.
Representative Macri, maybe I can go to you.
You co-sponsored the legislation
to establish Washington Cares back in 2019.
You've been a champion of it ever since.
Why are you speaking out about this?
How would a yes vote on 2124
impact Washington Cares from your perspective?
-2124, as Heather said, will gut the program.
And we know that the vast majority of us
are going to need long-term care.
And by not having that available for folks,
we will actually impact all taxpayers.
Right now we have a long-term care system
that does not work well for residents of this state.
It requires people essentially to bankrupt themselves
to be eligible for Medicaid.
And Medicaid is a public insurance program
that we all pay for.
The trajectory for that expense is growing exponentially.
So it hurts families, and it hurts all taxpayers,
and the long-term care trust program
provides a safety net to all Washingtonians,
and this initiative would yank that away.
-Okay, thanks.
And we're gonna pull apart some of those issues, too.
And maybe I can start with you,
Representative Abbarno, on this one,
following up on this idea that if 2124 passes
and more people can opt-out of Washington Cares,
the program likely would not have enough participation
and would not survive.
That would mean we go back to this long-term care system
run by private insurance companies.
The no side would say they've been unstable, very costly.
You got Washington Cares
costs the average person about $300 a year,
but the private market, long-term care
may be closer to $7,000 a year,
with companies that will deny you
if you have pre-existing conditions --
heart disease, sleep apnea, et cetera.
Is relying on private insurance companies
the right way to approach the crisis
of long-term care in our state?
-Well, I think it's a misnomer or disingenuous
to say that the Washington Cares program
is a long-term care program.
No healthcare provider I've spoken to
or long-term care provider I've spoken to
has said that $36,500 is long-term care.
I think there are better ways
to address the long-term care issues we have,
not just in our state, but in the country
by incentivizing these types of programs,
incentivizing this as a benefit through employers
to having some financial literacy about saving
and providing long-term care for yourself and your family
and reducing the overburdensome regulations
that have forced a lot of the providers to leave the state.
We need more people in this realm
providing the benefit to drive down those costs.
The problem we have with the Washington Cares Act
as it's developed was the fact
that it provides a very short benefit for a lot of investment.
And the fact is,
there are better ways to deal with long-term care.
I've not spoken to anyone
who said long-term care planning isn't important.
The issue today is not
whether long-term care is important or not.
It's whether this program
that was pushed in in a very partisan manner
is the right plan for workers and working families.
And I think the proof is in the initiative signers,
and the proof is in those folks
who wanted to opt-out of this program.
-Yeah. -People don't think
this is the answer to long-term care.
We should really hit the reset button and go back to the table
and have a good discussion in a bipartisan manner
about how we address this issue.
-Representative Macri,
I'm hearing a few things about a bipartisan discussion.
I just wanted to bring you in. Any response
to what Representative Abbarno was saying there
with regard to Washington Cares?
-Well, I'd be delighted to work with Representative Abbarno,
as I've shared before, in working on solutions
to the long-term care and retirement crisis in our state.
All I've seen from Republicans in the legislature
is push to repeal Washington Cares.
I have not actually seen any alternative proposals
that are viable,
and I think that's because it is well-studied and well-known
that a private-market solution does not work.
The long-term care-insurance market has failed in Washington
and has failed nationally.
And there's a reason for that,
and that is because almost all of us
are going to need long-term care,
and so it does not pencil as a private-market solution.
That's why this public benefit works.
What I'm hearing is something similar
to we have a retirement crisis.
Social Security doesn't provide enough support.
Why don't we just end Social Security?
And that obviously is not a solution
that most of us in Washington would support,
and that's the argument I'm hearing here.
$36,500 would go a long way to help families --
families like mine,
who have had to deal with addressing
long-term care supports
for multiple older family members of mine.
And I do want to speak to the comment
that this is bad for working moms and for women.
-Okay. -Because in fact right now,
there is a huge bias allowed in the law
for private long-term care insurers
to discriminate against women in particular.
Because on average women live longer,
the premiums are much higher in the private market --
up to 70% higher for women than for men.
Premiums can be higher if people with pre-existing conditions
can even get coverage.
This provides a fair and balanced way
for folks to get the care that they need.
Over 3 million Washingtonians are participating
in WA Cares now. -Yeah.
-And I-2124 would just, as I said before,
yank this benefit away from people
who've already paid into it.
-It doesn't yank it away. It gives them an opt-out.
And to keep saying it's gonna --
if the program is financially stable,
it wouldn't matter if people opt-out.
We gave 500,000 people an option to opt-out
at the very beginning of the program,
and at least 500,000 took it.
There's a whole host of other people --
waitresses and cab drivers and all the other people
that are working in jobs that don't have an HR department
that could come in and show them how to opt-out
or they would have.
It would have a much greater number,
just like anything that's union-backed and forced.
But as for the women, let's talk about that,
because this specifically --
specifically screws over working moms.
It's designed --
And so you have to pay into the program for 10 years.
So let's take a 21-year-old woman
who graduates from college.
She pays into it for nine years,
and then she takes five years off to raise her family.
The program is designed that if she takes five years off,
she loses all of her benefits
and has to start over at year one.
Men don't take five years off.
It's designed -- Perhaps.
-Yeah. -But that's not the issue here.
-Okay. -Women, by and large,
take five, six years off to take care of kids.
And this program was designed specifically
to screw them out of the benefits.
-May I address that? -Please. Yeah.
-So, let's look at the facts here.
Number one, women are actually the ones
who are gonna be most hurt by 2124,
because about 800,000 people in Washington State
are currently unpaid caregivers,
and most of those are women who have to leave their jobs
and lose income in order to care for in-laws,
family members, parents
who don't have long-term care coverage at all.
So I-2124 will hurt women that way,
and will also hurt small businesses --
all businesses as their workforce leaves
to take care of their family members.
Secondly, the facts are
that if a woman takes time off to care for her children,
on average, it's one year that they take off, maybe two.
And if this is really a problem,
I think this is something
that our two legislators could definitely address,
instead of throwing -- and may I use the term
throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.
-I believe you just did.
Brian, you had something you wanted to say.
-Well, I think she brings up another point.
If you take time off to take care of Memaw
or to take care of your family
and you take five years off
to take care of your aging mother or whatever,
again, you're out of the system.
You have to pay into it for 10 years
if you take five years off.
And she hasn't addressed that issue.
"Oh, we can fix it." You had two years to fix this.
The Governor gave you two extra years to fix it,
and they didn't.
It's still a problem, and it hasn't been addressed.
-I think this is something that the state legislature
of course could fix.
And I think the little things that people are saying
could be important things that need to be addressed.
But legislators could address this instead of, again,
taking away benefits that people have already paid into.
85% of working Washingtonians are gonna be relying on this.
-No benefits are being taken away.
This is an opt-out. So quit saying that.
-You don't think it would gut -- -No.
-You don't think it would gut the program?
-No. I think the program is insolvent as it is designed.
-Okay. -Okay. That's not true.
And let's go back to the actuarial.
Let's go back to the actuarial and insurance agents themselves
who would benefit from the repeal, right,
from 2124, who call it a death spiral,
who say it will bankrupt it,
because let's say a few people opt-out.
Then the program has to jack up the premiums
in order to continue doing what they promised.
Then more people are going to opt out.
By 2027 -- one year --
the program will die according to actuarials.
-Thank you. Please.
-I will say -- I have another point,
but my point is,
what we're talking about today is the amount of people
who want to run from this program and making it bankrupt.
That alone should raise red flags
with anybody watching the show.
-You're talking about people who opted out initially?
-Right. And who want to opt out.
If we're talking about an opt-out bankrupting this,
then we've got a real problem with the program
in and of itself.
But I will say that pointing to legislators to fix this,
I had a number of bills that never even got a hearing,
one that would allow portability,
one that would make it a property right,
especially in a state like ours
that really holds a tenant for community property.
You know, if your spouse does not work
and you invest in this program for 30 years
and your spouse needs long-term care help,
you can't use this program to benefit them.
They lose out on all of that income and value
in a community-property state.
I mean, that's a shame. -Yeah.
-And that's something that people should know about.
And so it's not just about women.
It's about any spouse who's not working, who stays home,
is going to lose out on this community benefit.
So there were a number of pieces of legislation --
about four of them were mine -- to try to fix this.
-Right. -And none of them got a hearing.
So we tried. -Thank you.
And I know that there was some work that you did,
Representative Macri, over this past session
to try to add some of these different pieces in,
like portability.
Can you speak to that, please?
I just want to make sure I hear on that part.
-Yeah. We've made a number of tweaks and improvements
to the program over the years.
This last session, we did pass portability.
And that was informed by a lot of careful work that happened.
And there's opportunities to continue to improve the program.
I mean, you can't transfer your Medicare after you die,
and so I think that we are kind of
comparing apples to oranges here.
But we won't be able to make any improvements to the program
if I-2124 passes.
Fewer than 5% of people have long-term care insurance,
although more than 70% of us after age 65
are going to need long-term care supports.
I think that speaks to a failure --
a failure of the private market. -Okay.
-Can we talk about the private market?
-Please.
-Because before this terrible program,
the shambolic program was implemented,
there were at least five or six companies
that were offering private care.
As this was implemented, that number went down to one.
For a while, it went down to zero.
I just checked today this morning
to find out from my HR person
what's available for someone to buy private insurance.
There is now one company that offers something
for companies that have smaller than 50 employees,
and there's two offering it for larger.
There were five or six that were offering it.
This thing has destroyed the private market,
and it hasn't given something that actually replaces it.
$36,000 -- it's a lie.
If people buy into and think
that they're getting long-term care.
They are not. They're getting $36,000,
which when my father passed away recently last year,
it was two months -- two to three months max.
And so you're promising something
that you're not giving them, and you're saying
that this is destroying it, and it's not.
-Heather, can I have you jump in?
I just want to make sure I key in on this point,
because this is a payroll tax we're talking about here.
For every $100 you earn, 58 cents,
so the average worker pays a little bit less
than 300 bucks a year.
But there's no cap on that tax.
Higher earners would pay much more potentially.
What you receive is this maximum benefit of $36,500.
Critics would say it's a one-size-fits-all
kind of a benefit, depending on the care you need,
and it might last maybe a couple of months here.
I just wanted to talk about this idea
that the cost of Washington Cares is too high
for what you get in return.
I think that's the point that Brian was making here.
Can you respond to that? -Sure.
Look, if you're not a hedge-fund millionaire,
like Brian is, then $36,000 --
Which is where it starts, right?
That's not the cap.
It starts at $36,500
and goes up to $60,000, $70,000 in 20 years, right?
'Cause it rises with inflation. -Okay.
-That amount of money for most people
who do not have savings is a huge amount of money.
And here's what it covers. It covers more than --
-For a -- -I'm sorry. I'm still speaking.
-Yeah.
-It covers over 1,000 hours of somebody coming in
and providing home-care aid --
someone to feed you, to make sure that you have someone
who is able to help you go to the toilet.
It helps people with a bridge.
So say you don't want to sell off your home.
Say you don't want to sell down all of your assets
to get onto Medicaid. -Right.
-Remember that you have to have less than $2,000
in order to qualify for Medicaid.
This is gonna help people stay off of Medicaid,
help them stay out of poverty,
and protect taxpayers at the same time.
But I-2124 will remove that choice.
-Representative Abbarno.
-Well, I will just say that $36,500 adjusted
is not gonna keep you off of Medicaid if you need Medicaid.
$36,500 -- I have through all the testimony
I've heard on this legislation
and this initiative regarding long-term care --
I have not heard long-term care professionals
say $36,500 is meaningful relief to any families.
Look. I mean, this initiative gives families choice.
It gives workers choice to decide their healthcare
and their long-term care needs
based on their family situations.
This opt-out is not gonna destroy the program.
What it does, it provides choice for workers,
it provides choice for families
to decide what is best for their long-term care needs.
And I think that's the essential part of this initiative.
-You really don't believe
that this choice would gut the program
with regard to people opting out of it?
'Cause we've talked about it.
Nearly 500,000 people did when it was first available to them.
And then you've got 63% people voting in 2019
saying we want to repeal this, basically.
I guess that's my concern.
-I don't think the program will be gutted
if we don't want it to be gutted, right?
I do think it provides options.
But what I think is more important to this discussion
is the fact that it's about choice.
If you find a mass exodus away from this program
and we find that this program doesn't work for Washington,
then we should go back to the table.
If we're talking about people choosing
to leave the program gutting the program,
then maybe we should start back in 2019
and say maybe the program should never have been passed
in the first place.
Maybe we should go sit down,
decide what is best for Washington
and our working families, and start fresh.
-This sounds like something people would have said in 1939
about Social Security.
"Well, you can opt-in to Social Security,
but you don't have to -- you know, you can opt-out of it."
Well, then, we would not have Social Security today,
which we all -- well, most people -- rely on heavily.
-This was never meant to be Social Security.
This was never a social safety net.
-Yes, it is. -This was never supposed to be that way.
And, to the point of the benefit,
the benefit provides an illusion to working families
that it is a social benefit
that will take care of all their long-term needs.
$36,500 adjusted will not protect you from long-term care.
Most families are gonna wake up one day
and find out that benefit is so small
that they're in the same position
they would have been without it.
-That is not true. -That is true.
-The majority of us will need long-term care
for less than two years of our lives.
The longer that people can stay living independently --
And this program is built on the nation-leading
long-term care system that we have here in Washington State.
This is in large part
why this program works so well in our state.
If we can keep people living independently,
then indeed we keep them off of Medicaid.
And I just want to reiterate
that it is not a savings to workers
if this program goes away.
It will cost all of us, and all of us mightily,
in the regressive taxes we pay through sales tax,
property tax, B&O tax
to pay for a ballooning price tag on Medicaid.
Meanwhile, we will send families to be impoverished.
The rhetoric I'm hearing right here
disregards the experience of most middle-income families,
most of whom have had to care for family members.
-Thank you very much for that.
We need to close out the show.
This has flown by. I appreciate it.
Brian, 45-second version, if you could.
Final thoughts for voters about 2124.
-I think it guts the funding
that's supposed to go to the SEIU
when they do all the training for all the people
that are gonna be offering this care, number one.
Number two, it screws people at the low end
that you worry about on Medicaid.
If you're a Medicaid potential user
and you don't have enough money,
at the end of the day, you're gonna be on Medicaid,
and all the money you paid into it's
gonna go to someone upper-middle class
that doesn't need it.
I think it screws working moms,
it screws the poor, and it screws caregivers,
and it's not a good program.
-Alright. Heather, 45 seconds, if you could.
What do you want to leave voters with?
-So, 2124 sounds innocuous, right?
As gentlemen here have been saying,
"Oh, it just allows people to opt-out."
But insurance experts, tax experts,
actuarials over and over again --
I have a very long list.
I was just talking to some yesterday
who all say we have seen this over and over again,
that if you change this program,
it will immediately go bankrupt,
taking away $8 billion in benefits
for working Washingtonians who do not have $5,000 in savings,
much less enough to cover their long-term care costs.
Whatever it is, the amount that you're worried about,
is a huge amount of money to most working Washingtonians.
Our teachers, our nurses, our firefighters
do not have the level of savings
that are required to help them bridge this gap.
And finally, I just want to say there's nothing worse
for a working woman to hear that she needs to leave her job
and lose income to take care of a family member
who does not have a long-term care program or coverage,
and most people cannot afford that insurance.
This 2124 is gonna make it much worse.
-Representative Abbarno, if you could.
-Well, I'll just say this is a regressive tax
on workers and working families.
And the problem with this is it takes away choice --
choice to decide your own healthcare,
choice to decide your own long-term care.
And, you know, I'm urging a yes vote on the opt-out
because I think what it does
is it puts this type of planning
back in the hands of workers and working families.
There's a lot of problems with this program.
The opt-out is a good start to allow that choice.
I think even with the opt-out,
we're gonna continue to need to work on this program.
And with the amount of work we've spent
over the last four or five years trying to fix this program,
I think I go back to the beginning.
Maybe it shouldn't have passed in the first place,
and we should hit the reset button,
sit down in a bipartisan way,
and actually work on a real solution.
-Okay, Representative Macri, I'll give you the last word.
-Thanks. So, I-2124 hurts working people.
It hurts people with pre-existing conditions --
conditions like diabetes and cancer
and people who have long-term care needs,
which all of us -- most all of us are going to have.
I-2124 is proposed as providing a choice,
but it will take away flexibility and options
for millions of families in this state
when they're gonna need it the most.
It is imperative, I think,
for us to reject I-2124 at the ballot this year.
-Thank you all for your input here, and we will be right back.
What are people saying on social media about I-2124
to allow people to opt-out of the state's
long-term care-insurance plan.
One person writes...
Another person comments...
We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an e-mail at contact@seattlechannel.org
or find us on social media.
Thank you for that input.
Thank you for all of your input, as well.
And we will see you next time on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪