Doubts About Long-Term Care

Under the accounting rules that CBO uses to estimate the impact of a program on the budget deficit, premiums paid into the long-term-care program would count as government income, while benefits given to participants if they required such care would be counted as government spending. Because premiums would presumably accumulate over a number of years before people started requiring help with long-term care, income to the government would rise during that period but would eventually be outpaced by spending.