Here are 10 reasons why we have to change the way our country pays for long-term care. Please add others:1. The Age Wave is Unprecendented: About 10 million Americans need long-term care today. (Note: Long-term care is an array of services, from home care to assisted living, not simply nursing home care.) By 2020, 12 million older Americans will need long-term care.2. Americans Want More Choice: People want more choices than ever in how they live and receive care. The nursing home isn’t a place they want to choose. Guess what? Many states rely on institutional nursing homes for long-term care. To pay for choices that today’s consumer desires, we have to have new ways to pay for care.3. The Costs are Unsustainable: According to the independent, non-partisan Government Accounting Office (GAO), Medicare, Medicaid (which pays nearly half of all long-term care expenditures)and Social Security will nearly double as a share of the economy by 2035. Today long-term care alone costs federal and state governments $116.8 billion every year. We’ve been able to sustain these entitlements because of a low-depression era birth rates and a large postwar workforce. No more. Absent substantive change, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security will overwhelm the rest of the Federal budget.4. America’s Savings Rate is Deplorable: Americans are horrible savers. In fact, 2005 and 2006 marked the first time since the Great Depression that American’s charted a negative savings rate in back-to-back years. By 2030, many retirees will not have enough income and assets to cover basic expenditures or any expenses related to aging services.5. Business Production is Taking a Hit: According to the Metlife Mature Market Institute and National Alliance for Caregiving, American businesses lose as much as $33.6 billion in annual revenue because of employees’ need to care for their loved ones. That is approximately $2,110 per full-time employee who is also a caregiver.6. Busting State Budgets: On average, state governments spend 18% of their budgets on Medicaid, which pays for all most half of all long-term care costs. These costs are only rising and if left unchecked will crowd out all other spending.7. Americans are Clueless as to What Care Costs: In 2006, according to AARP study, only 8 percent of Americans over 45 could estimate the average monthly cost of what care costs within 20 percent of its actual cost. In an Ecumen study of baby boomers, nearly a third of boomers think that they will use Medicare to pay for their long-term care costs. Sorry … . Medicare won’t pay for costs such as memory care and assisted living.8. Long-Term Care Insurance isn’t the Whole Answer. Only one in five Americans can afford the long-term care insurance policy needed to meet their long-term needs. And even if everyone purchased the best private coverage he or she could afford, Medicaid costs still would triple by 2045.9. A Worker Shortage: According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the next four decades will see a need for more than 4 million care professionals in the U.S. Who will pay their salaries? We need to change the financing system to attract great professionals to this profession for the long-term. 10. Voters Want Change: The vast majority of Americans say that our health care system is broken and they desire a well-coordinated, integrated, cradle-to-grave system. To have such a system, long-term care/aging services must be part of the solution. According to a 2007 national poll by Genworth and the Mellman Group, voters want long-term care/aging services to be part of national health care reform. Nearly 8 in 10 voters (78%) stated that the presidential candidates should make this part of their health care proposals.