Lane Powell Attorneys Carin Marney and Jonathon Bashford co-authored an article in Seattle Business magazine’s March 2014 issue titled “Not Your Grandmother’s Nursing Home — Boomers and Obamacare Spur a Transformation of the Growing Long Term Care Industry.” In the article, Marney and Bashford discussed the recent and future transformations of nursing homes and the long term care industry brought on by the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and the growing senior population.
The modern nursing home was born from the Social Security Act, which conditioned payments in a way meant to eliminate state-run “almshouses” serving the elderly poor. Over the following decades, the long term care sector was radically transformed: The welfare model of almshouses gave way to highly regulated skilled nursing facilities modeled on hospitals, providing a higher standard of care to the far broader population.
Today, long term care faces another historic transition as approximately 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day for the next 15 years. According to U.S. Census projections, Washington’s population of seniors age 65 and older is expected to grow by more than half a million from 13.6 percent of the state’s population last year to more than 18 percent by 2030.