What is Long Term Care Insurance?
Long Term Care Insurance covers the expenses of in-home care, assisted living, or nursing homes when you require help or can no longer care for yourself. It intended to provide care over a long period of time because you have a chronic illness, disability, a cognitive impairment (such as Alzheimer’s) or are just plain getting old.
Won’t Medicare pay for my long term care?
No, it will not. It will pay for 100 days of skilled care in a nursing home after a hospital stay of 3 days or more, and it offers limited home health care following an illness or injury that you are expected to recover from.
Medicaid, a different program from Medicare, provides services for the truly poor. It will pay for long term care. In order to qualify for Medicaid one must “spend down” their assets. In the state of Oregon that means that your income must be below $2022/month and you have less than $2000 in assets.
Who needs Long Term Care Insurance?
If you are wealthy you likely will have the savings to pay for your long term care. If you are poor, the state will pay for it. But what if you are “in between”, like most of us? The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 70% of people who reach the age of 65 will need long term care at some time in their lives. If you have assets you wish to protect or want to be in control of the type of care you will receive you may want to consider Long Term Care Insurance.
Does long term care really cost that much?
It could cost a lot more than you think. Here is a table showing long term care costs for the Salem, Oregon area in 2013:
|
Average Cost |
Yearly Cost |
| Home health care (per hour) |
$22.00 |
$34,320.00 |
| Assisted living (per month) |
$3219.00 |
$38,628.00 |
| Nursing home (per day) |
$253.00 |
$92,345.00 |
You can see, that over an extended time, the costs add up. For example, let’s assume that you had two years of home health care, one year of assisted living and two years in a nursing home at the end of your life. The total cost would add up to over $293,000!
Is Long Term Care Insurance right for me?
Americans are living longer than ever and no one can predict what their need for long term care will be in the future. Perhaps even more than death itself, most of us fear becoming a burden to our families as we age. Exploring your options before you have a need puts you in the driver’s seat to make the best decisions about your future care and will remove burden of planning from your loved ones.
Here at Northwest Financial Group we can come along side you and assess your needs to see if Long Term Care insurance is right for you. As independent agents we represent many different companies and will be able to give you several quotes with different options.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “If you fail to plan you are planning to fail”. Don’t fail to plan for your long term care needs. We can help.
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