The American Association For Long-Term Care Insurance is supporting a fight to maintain the medical expense tax deduction at current levels.

The association announced it supports an AARP coalition that is against a planned increase in the medical expense tax deduction. The AARP-led coalition reportedly delivered a letter to leading U.S. senators last week asking them to continue the fight to maintain the medical expense deduction, an association press release said.

Taxpayers can continue to write off qualified health care expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income for 2018, said Jesse Slome, the association’s director. "Beginning January 1, 2019, all taxpayers may deduct only the amount of the total unreimbursed allowable medical care expenses for the year that exceeds 10 percent of their adjusted gross income," he added.

Nearly 8 million Americans claim the medical expense tax deduction to deduct qualified medical expenses from their federal income taxes, according to data from the IRS. The tax relief the deduction provides helps individuals to offset the cost of chronic and acute illnesses, according to the report.

A wide range of taxpayers could be impacted by the change in the tax deduction. Pregnant women, children, older Americans, and other adults have been able to claim the cost of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, equipment, and qualified long-term care services and long-term care insurance premiums, according to a previous letter from the AARP-coalition to senators.

Currently, 6.3 million of those claiming the deduction had a household income of $75,000 or less, while 4.5 million of those claiming it reported income of $50,000 or less. Further, 55 percent of all households who claim the deduction have at least one household member age 65 or older, according to the report.

"There are millions of seniors who purchased tax-qualified long-term care insurance policies who would lose the present or future ability to deduct premiums at a point when living off limited retirement income and Social Security,” Slome explained.

Roughly 8 million Americans have some form of long-term care insurance, according to the association. The majority of the policies sold over the past decade met the IRS established tax-qualified standards, said Slome.