Get Answers to WA Cares FAQs
WA Cares pays for long-term care at home. When we’re sick, elderly, or seriously injured. Whether we have a pre-existing condition like diabetes or not. The WA Cares Fund is there for working Washingtonians. Have questions about WA Cares? We’ve got answers!
HELPFUL LINKS:
- For Employers: FAQ for Employers, Employment Security Department: 833-717- 2273 (select option 3)
- For Employees: Exemption Information; Call 1-844-CARE4WA (844-227-3492)
- Applying for benefits
- WA Cares Fund FAQs
WA Cares FAQS
Click on a frequently asked question below to view the answer.
WA Cares benefits cover costs for things like medical equipment, home care, and support with daily living. WA Cares will also pay our family members to help with cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping. You can pay for home modifications, like a ramp or accessible shower. WA Cares also covers residential facilities.
- WA Cares was not designed to cover the full costs of 24/7 care in a nursing home for years. It was designed to provide a flexible, affordable way to access and pay for support so you can live at home as long as possible, buy time before depleting your savings, and offset the costs of care in a facility.
- WA Cares funds will give millions of us critical resources & support during what can often be the most stressful, physically, emotionally & financially challenging times of our lives.
- Innovation requires iteration to achieve full potential. Programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were all subjected to doubts and calls for changes. Today, most of us could never imagine life without them. The same will undoubtedly be true of WA Cares and we continue to strengthen the program in the years ahead.
Data shows: Most of us will need help at some point in our lives, due to an injury, illness, disease or the normal challenges that can come with age.
70% of us will need help with meals, dressing, moving around, using the bathroom, or other household tasks someday, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Another fact is: Long-term care is not just for seniors.
40% of us needing assistance with daily living are under 65, & 57% of non-elderly adults have a pre-existing condition like cancer, diabetes, MS, Lupus, high blood pressure, asthma.
- Far more people in WA will be able to use their new WA Cares benefit than folks who won’t. More than 3 million Washingtonians will be able to tap their WA Cares benefits when they need home care. In the most recent five-year period, data shows only approximately 16,000 people – 1.3% of Washingtonians over 65 moved out of state.
- Other states have similar programs in the works. Washington is first out of the gate to thoughtfully build a program aimed at providing flexible, affordable benefits for workers when the likely need for long term care comes along — there is no federal program that can meet the needs of an aging population. Many other states, including California, are following our lead in developing public long term care benefit programs, improving the pathway to making benefits portable.
- The issue of portability can and should be resolved, but it will require cooperation with other programs since other states do not yet have similar programs to WA Cares. We have more time to build the path to portability. WA Cares implementation begins July 1, with distribution of benefits to individuals who qualify starting in 2026. This gives legislators, program administrators, and stakeholders time to make the tweaks that are still needed.
You only contribute while you’re working. If you stop working for less than five years before you’ve contributed for 10 years, you won’t make contributions to your WA Cares benefit. You can begin making contributions again when you go back to work, even as little as 10 hours/week on average, to continue vesting.
If you stop working after contributing for 10 years, you’re already fully vested, and will only contribute more if you begin working again.
- A lot of folks think their health insurance or Medicare will cover home care or long term care facility stays. They do not. Neither does disability or workers compensation.
- The only options to pay for long term care until now have been buying a separate private corporate long term care policy, or completely draining your family’s savings and assets to $2,000 or less to qualify for Medicaid.
- The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance found that only 3% of the U.S. population has long-term care insurance.
- Private long term care insurance is unaffordable and inaccessible to most people. Corporate insurance companies deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. For a single man at 55 years old, long-term care premiums are around $2,220 per year, while single women will likely see premiums around $3,700 per year, according to financial tech company Smart Asset. Private insurance company premiums rise with age, and you must continue paying them even after retirement.
- With WA Cares, now workers have a dependable, public, affordable way to build a benefit that will help when the inevitable need for long term care comes along.
Actuarial analysis shows the program is on solid ground, solvent through 2098. At this time there is no reason to believe a rate increase will be necessary.
- The average American savings is $5,300. WA Cares is meant to help the vast majority of us who lack the savings to pay for care out of our pockets, and don’t want to be forced to drain our family’s assets to qualify for Medicaid. WA Cares will most benefit those least able to afford the cost of care – those of us caught between a rock and a hard place.
- Most people pay for long-term care through reverse mortgages on their homes. But that leaves 40% of us who are renters without a source of wealth.
- The long term care crisis disproportionately impacts women and Black, Indigenous and people of color. Most often, family caregivers are women or people of color. Accessing long term care is even more challenging for women and BIPOC-led households with historical barriers to mechanisms for savings that mean lower retirement balances, and less of a buffer when the need to pay for care comes along.
- There are an estimated 820,000 unpaid family caregivers in WA. Women are more likely to be the ones to quit their job to care for family members, depleting family savings and income potential, and taking valuable members out of the workforce. WA Cares will help our family members keep their jobs, or pay for respite care when we stop work to care for a loved one.
You can apply for an exemption if you:
- Live outside of Washington
- Are the spouse or registered domestic partner of an active-duty service member of the US armed forces
- Have a non-immigrant work visa
- Are a veteran with a 70% service-connected disability rating or higher
The state intends to ensure that WA Cares benefits are accessible to all workers in Washington, regardless of where they are from or their status. Traditional health insurance and Medicare do not cover long term care. Nor are these federal programs accessible to all workers in our state.
Just like other public benefits like paid family and medical leave, the intent with WA Cares is to provide a safety net that’s available to all for when the inevitable need for help at home arises in the event of debilitating limitations due to injury, illness or disease.
Before benefits become available in 2026, WA Cares program staff, WA Department of Social and Human Services (DSHS), the Employment Security Department (ESD) and WA LTSS commissioners will develop a process to ensure all workers who contribute to building their WA Cares benefit can access their benefit, whether they are self-employed or gig workers, and regardless of their immigration status.
Many folks who applied to exempt themselves from the new worker benefit, WA Cares, are now seeing what a huge return on investment WA Cares provides, and are asking how they can opt back in.
This past year, the state Long Term Care Commission recommended that the legislature enact a change in the WA Cares program to allow people who opted out and received lifetime exemptions due to the purchase of private long term care insurance to opt back into the program through June 30 2028. It will take legislative action to approve a change to WA Cares to allow workers who received an exemption to opt back into the program.
This change would, in particular, benefit near-retirees who may have purchased a corporate policy to opt out before enactment of a change to the program that offers them partial benefits based on the number of years they have contributed.
Have a question about WA Cares that we don’t have answered here?
Contact us here or send us an email here.
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