Let’s start with a change that was not made to the WA Cares fund in 2025. Lawmakers did not pass a law requiring recertification from people who received exemptions from WA Cares because they had or obtained private insurance for long-term care.
The idea was discussed the past few years, and a recommendation for such a requirement was even made by the Long-Term Services and Supports Trust Commission, despite original communication from the state that an exemption was a one-time, permanent thing.
In addition to the commission and some lawmakers who were rightly concerned they needed every taxpayer they could get paying into WA Cares to keep the fund healthy, some sellers in the long-term care (LTC) industry were also urging the change. They worried plans had been purchased by many people who wanted to escape the WA Cares payroll tax and that these buyers would dump policies when they thought it was safe to do so.
The industry was used. How much, no one is sure. What we do know is that about 475,000 people were approved for this type of exemption and the LTSS Commission reports only 35,000 people typically purchase private long-term care insurance in a year. The typical age people purchase that coverage? Around age 60. Most people who opted out of WA Cares for having private long-term-care insurance (LTCI) were in their 40s, LTSS reports. An expert in long-term care product distribution told me in November that one company that wrote 18,000 new policies before the WA Cares deadline ended up losing about a third of those policyholders within three years.
Even though lawmakers have not yet adopted the LTSS recommendation for recertification doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I think it could if WA Cares needs more money to pay benefits to some workers. (Not all workers will receive the $36,500 prize money, even if they pay into the program all of their working years. See benefit eligibility requirements here.) Also, the state has always had the ability to verify an employee's long-term-care insurance and request additional information from the employee. (See this Washington Administrative Code.)
When I asked the Employment Security Department about the possibility of the state requiring re-attestation or proof of coverage for the nearly 500,000 that opted out, a representative said, “We do not know what future legislation will be proposed but acknowledge that the LTSS Trust Commission has discussed this issue in the past.”
The WA Cares website says this: “If you already have an approved exemption, it’s up to you to decide to maintain or cancel your private long-term care policy. You should speak with your broker or agent who sold you the policy about options.”
Those answers don’t give me confidence that dropping LTCI won’t eventually get you a one-way ticket back into WA Cares. My advice to people who ask if they can cancel their LTCI policy that got them the WA Cares exemption is always that they should know doing so would be a gamble. Also, LTCI makes sense for many people.
The bottom line? State lawmakers can change the rules surrounding WA Cares whenever they want. They have changed the law many times.
Latest changes
In the 2025 legislative session, WA Cares was changed in several ways. I urged two of the changes for several years. Senate Bill 5291 brings automatic exemptions for active-duty service members who have off-duty civilian employment and to employees here on nonimmigrant work visas. It’s a great move to not take money from people you know from the outset will never be able to take advantage of the WA Cares benefit.
The law also included an important eligibility change. An individual can now qualify for a WA Cares benefit if they meet health requirements and have paid taxes into the program for 10 or more years. The requirement used to say that you needed to pay in for 10 or more years without an interruption of five or more consecutive work years. This is an important change for the very caregivers that WA Cares claims it is here to help.
Read more about SB 5291 here. It also allows individuals who opted out (via private LTCI) to rescind their exemption and join the program between Jan. 1, 2026, and July 1, 2028. ESD will be contacting those workers and providing more information after this part of the law next year.
The bill also includes a structure for private sellers to offer LTCI in Washington state that would wrap around WA Cares. That means the insurance product sold would kick in when a person's WA Cares benefit runs out, as lawmakers have acknowledged that the $36,500 benefit, and its inflationary amount in the future, won’t be enough money to cover most people’s long-term care needs. The trouble with this wrap-around insurance hope? Industry leaders tell me they aren’t sure anyone will be interested in offering it.
Good luck, I say. WA Cares and hopeful taxpayers paying for the fund have always needed it.