The Impact of a Long-Term Care Information Campaign on Insurance Coverage

Abstract

I estimate the impact of an information campaign on long-term care planning behaviors. Long-term care expenses represent a large, mostly uninsured risk for the elderly, and Medicaid payments for long-term care expenses total more than $150 billion annually. In an effort to curtail these expenses, the federal government partnered with 26 states over the course of 5 years to run the “Own Your Future” campaign, which urged individuals to plan ahead for their long-term care needs. Using a difference-in-differences strategy that takes advantage of the staggered timing of the rollout and restricted data from the Health and Retirement Study, I find that the campaign increased long-term care insurance coverage by one percentage point, concentrated among individuals in the top quintile of the asset distribution, for whom long-term care insurance coverage increases by four percentage points, or seventeen percent. A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates Medicaid savings of $483 million in present value. This estimate represents a lower bound for the total savings from the program since individuals may have made adjustments on other margins.

Keywords: Insurance, Long-term care, Medicaid

JEL Classification: H51, I13