HEARING - U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

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that educational process, and we are all coming out with policies,
and we are going to be actively marketing.
I can talk about my own company. We have had a nursing home
care policy, and I am on a committee that has just developed what
I would say is probably one of the best policies in the industry that
we are going to be releasing very shortly. And we are going to
spend a lot of money trying to promote it and sell it.
Senator WILSON. Well, isn't it true that to the extent that you
and some of your competitors actually develop a competition that
you are going to wind up offering better benefits at better premiums?
Isn't that the history of competition in your industry?
Mr. SHAPLAND. Sure, that is the reason we have the free enterprise
system here in the United States. The same thing happens in
the insurance industry as anywhere else. I mean, you have low
auto insurance rates because you have competition. You can have
low nursing home rates because you have competition, but only as
low as what the claim experience says they can be. There is an irreducible
minimum.
Senator WILSON. Let me ask you a question that assumes that
the industry is going to want to expand coverage and expand the
competition-otherwise I might point out this is all mostly academic.
Mr. SHAPLAND. No. I can assure you that it is definitely committed
to that, and the events of the last year aptly demonstrate that.
There are just a myriad of companies that are introducing nursing
home policies. We are not just sitting still.
A year ago, I might have said there are only a few companies out
there selling nursing home policies, and today there might be 70,
and maybe tomorrow or a year from now, there will be 200.
Senator WILSON. Could you provide the committee with some statistics
as to what actually has happened in this last dramatic year,
because I--
Mr. SHAPLAND. We would have to run a new survey. But I could
easily give you some survey information from our prepared statement.
Senator WILSON. There must be some survey information in
there. What I would like to receive as well would relate to the kind
of coverage that is being offered.
Mr. SHAPLAND. Yes. Let me offer this and see if it would fill your
needs. I could send you information regarding, say, 20 random
nursing home policies and exactly what they pay, to give you an
idea of what nursing home coverage out there is like. That would
be a very easy thing for me to do.
Is that what you are looking for, trying to find out what coverage
is being offered?
Senator WILSON. I am trying to find out what coverage is being
offered and also what the real interest is, and that is perhaps the
best way to determine it, of the industry in getting into the field
and creating a competition that does not seem to yet exist.
Mr. SHAPLAND. The last part, I am having trouble rationalizing
in my own mind how I would answer or provide you with information,because--