Preparing for the Challenges of Long Term Care
First, the bad news. Long term care is a common need that you have as you grow older. You might already know people who have spent time in a nursing home, or have required extensive home health care. Perhaps you have helped to provide care for a parent or other loved one. It can be both an extensive (average stay in a nursing home is 2.6 years) and expensive (costs as high as $75,000 per year) proposition. What is worse is that help is not necessarily on the way, at least help from the government. Medicare pays for only about 2% of long term care costs in America. Medicare pays only for skilled care (the vast majority of care is intermediate and custodial), and it does so at the rate of 100% of the cost for the first 20 days of care, everything above a significant daily deductible for days 21 to 100, and then it pays nothing. Medicaid is another Federal program that can pay for long term care, but as a form of welfare program, it requires you to spend down your assets first before it will pay. The Medicaid spend down process is not something that you should choose to go through unless you had to. You have worked hard all of your life, too hard to see a lifetime of savings disappear. But there is good news. If you first looked at Long Term Care Insurance back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the industry was still in its infancy, then you would have found that the policies were too expensive. And they really only covered Nursing Home Care, where you don't want to go anyway if it can be helped. That has changed greatly in recent years. With a greater claims payment history to work with, insurance companies have lowered rates on new policies, at the same time that they have made them much more consumer friendly. Policies now have available extensive home health care options that allow you to receive care in your home, and to retain the dignity and independence that you desire and deserve. Some policies even have provisions where you can pay a family member or trusted friend to provide your care. It is important for you to explore your long term care
options. If you do not own a long term care plan, it is time for you to
learn about the extraordinary new options now available to you. If you
do own a long term care pan, you might want to compare the newer
programs that are available to you that may increase your benefits and
perhaps even lower your costs. Notice: Learn more about our team and why you may want to consider contacting us. We are a Maryland-based business for local residents but we can also direct you to the appropriate agent in your area regarding the same strategies that we offer to improve your safe money management plan. Your future and your family will thank you for it! |
Preparing for the challenges of
long term care is probably not a comfortable
subject for you to have to think about. The idea of needing long term
care, let alone spending time in a nursing home, is very disconcerting.
And yet with statistics showing that the odds of someone over the age
of 65 needing long term care being one in four, and the odds of at
least one member of a married couple needing long term care being seven
in ten, it is a challenge that you must face head on.Randall Roberts |
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