Long Term Care & Medicare

Have you planned for Long-Term Care expenses?

Most people know that Medicare only covers 90 days each year in a hospital or nursing home. But what they usually don’t know is that once the hospital or nursing care facility changes your care status from “skilled care” to “custodial care”, Medicare no longer pays.   This also means that any Medicare supplement plan you have will stop paying as well.

Long-term care is a range of services and support for your personal care needs. Most long-term care isn’t medical care, but rather help with basic personal tasks of everyday life, sometimes called activities of daily living. Medicare doesn’t cover long-term care (also called custodial care), if that’s the only care you need. Most nursing home care is custodial care.

The annual cost of long-term care expenses range from $17,680 for adult day care to more than $92,000 for a private room in a nursing home, according to Genworth Financial.

So why don’t people start saving for this expense or at least buy long-term care insurance?

A new poll conducted by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research says about 4 people out of 10 don’t think they will ever need long-term care.

“I’m very healthy at 68 and I really don’t have any impending and current problems.” said one man surveyed.

The survey found that nearly 4 in 10 respondents mistakenly expect to turn to Medicare, which doesn’t pay for long-term care. Respondents with incomes below $50,000 were more likely to expect to rely on government programs such as medicaid (MaineCare) to take care of them.  What a lot of people forget is that to allow MaineCare to take over the bill you have to pay for the costs until your assets are gone, meaning you have used up all your savings and in some cases sold your home and used that money as well.

I think it is in everyone’s best interest to know how much long-term care insurance will cost you before you make the decision to go without.   Most people I talk to think that Long-Term Care insurance is “too expensive”.  And yes, the “free” quotes you get online from various websites are very generalized and do not give you an accurate price which makes most people think it’s not affordable.  Often times there are alternative insurance strategies you can use to make long-term care insurance affordable at any age.

If you would like to know how much a Long-Term care insurance policy would cost then fill out the form below and I will have a licenced agent contact you.