And this is before the full impact of the Baby Boom retirement. Today's 77 million baby boomers start turning 85 in 2030. We need to encourage people to prepare for the largest threat to their retirement security. If we encourage more people to plan ahead, we can ensure that we target precious Medicaid dollars to those who are truly in need. We began this process in 1996 by passing provisions to give greater tax benefits to long-term care insurance.
Family caregivers provide a tremendous amount of long-term care services.
Their role goes far beyond comforting a family member struggling with a chronic illness. Without the assistance of caregivers, more people would require institutional care and the public cost of long-term care services would increase significantly. The other critical problem in the area of long-term care is that people are not aware of the need to plan ahead. Despite this concern, people are misinformed about the necessity of planning ahead. Several national surveys have shown that the majority of people believe that Medicare covers long-term care, but it does not.