Home Care Rule reduced older adults’ paid home care use

That worker-pay change brings the access consequence into view: the study found potential unintended consequences of labor regulations in long-term-care markets, particularly reduced access to paid home care for older adults. Using Health and Retirement Study data from 2008 to 2018, the study found that the 2015 Home Care Rule reduced older adults’ probability of using paid home care by approximately 4.8 percentage points and reduced paid-care hours by about 0.46 hours per day, with non-users coded as zero. It found no statistically significant effect on days of paid home care per week or monthly out-of-pocket expenditures on paid home care, and no robust evidence that reductions in paid home care were systematically offset by increased use of home health services, institutional formal care, or care from family members or friends.