When older Americans face a need for long term care, they face a crisis that is all but unresolvable. Long term care is specifically excluded under Medicare policy, and few insurance packages adequately protect the elderly from catastrophic long term care costs. Only Medicaid, the means-tested health care program for all ages, provides coverage of long term care. By default then, we have a poverty-based long term care system in the United States. / What are the effects of a poverty-based long term care system? Class-based theories of the welfare state suggest that targeted benefits stratify society along class lines. This study suggests that the effects of targeted benefits can be devastating to the elderly and their families, and that the negative side-effects fall disproportionately on women and nonwhites. Targeted benefits do create class cleavages, but they also divide society along dimensions that transcend class lines, namely race and gender. / This dissertation examines Medicare and Medicaid policy, as well as the National Nursing Home Survey of 1985 and the National Long Term Care Survey of 1982-1984. Specific topics analyzed include spenddown, Medicaid use in nursing homes and in the community, the uncovered poor, the Medicaid gap, Medicaid's revolving door, spousal impoverishment and informal caregiving. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-08, Section: A, page: 3096. / Major Professor: Jill Quadagno. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76457 |
| Contributors | Meyer, Madonna Harrington., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 303 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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