A Descriptive Analysis of Patterns of Informal and Formal Caregiving among Privately Insured and Non-Privately Insured Disabled Elders Living in the Community

This research was designed to answer current questions surrounding long-term care insurance. It was also designed to provide basic sociodemographic and service utilization profiles for disabled private long-term care insurance policyholders, and to compare such data and findings to the experiences of non-insured disabled community-dwelling elders. Finally, the authors set out to discuss the implications of such findings on the service delivery system as well as on the design of private and public long-term care programs and policies. This was done by interviewing about 700 community-dwelling long-term care insurance claimants receiving benefits under their policies. Also interviewed were their informal caregivers. [67 PDF pages]