Simplifying Long Term Care

What is Long-Term Care? When people consider the subject of long-term care, they often think about nursing homes. In fact, long-term care has little to do with nursing homes. Understanding the difference can help you protect your family and finances.

The Consequences of Living Longer

Long-term care is a continuum of care services and housing that you will need later in life. Think you won’t live a long life? Think back 25 years ago. If you had cancer or a stroke, you simply died. Few ever heard of Alzheimer’s. Today, it is the leading cause for long-term care services. The longer you live, the more likely you are to need care. The question is not who will take care of you, because your family will most often, but rather what will that care do to your family and finances.

Long-Term Care is Usually Custodial Care

Long-term care is defined as needing assistance with your activities of daily living (toileting, bathing, dressing, eating, transferring from one point to another, and continence). It also includes cognitive impairment so severe that the individual needs constant supervision. If you need custodial care, chances are it will be delivered in the community, not in a nursing home. Many of you have heard compelling statistics from The New England Journal of Medicine stating that 43% of those over age 65 will need nursing home care. What the article actually said is that that number may spend some time in a facility. The fact is, few end their days in one. Every study conducted finds that care is overwhelmingly provided at home. The key question, of course, is who is going to pay for it? Who Covers the Cost?

Medicare & VA

Medicare, the primary health care program for retirees pays only for skilled or rehabilitative care, not custodial care in any venue. Medicaid, a federal and state program for financially needy individuals will pay for custodial care, but primarily in nursing homes. Funding for home care and assisted living is very limited and based on availability of funds. Veterans believe that the VA will pay for home care, adult day care, or assisted living. As with Medicaid, funding is limited and generally based on service-related disability. In fact, the federal government has as much said this to veterans by encouraging them to purchase long-term care insurance through the new Federal Long-Term Care Insurance program. The result is that consumers are forced to pay privately for their care. Unfortunately, the best thought-out retirement plan rarely takes into consideration living a long life. Put another way, those assets and income have been allocated to pay for retirement, not for the consequences of living a long life. This results in the need to invade principal and divert income. As a result, one of a seniors’ greatest fear, outliving their assets, literally may come true.

The Role of Long-Term Care Insurance

The use of long-term care insurance thus becomes an important part of planning for disability caused by living a long life. The product has two roles: helping keep families together and allowing your retirement portfolio to execute for the purpose for which it was intended, namely retirement. From a family perspective, who will provide your care? Like it or not, children will play a key role. Long-term care insurance (LTCI) doesn’t replace the need for family involvement in providing care but rather builds on it. It pays professionals to assist the person with the toughest tasks such as toileting, bathing, feeding and continence. This, in turn, allows the family to provide care better and longer at home. That leads to a critical question: have YOU planned for the consequences of living a long life? From a financial point of view, LTCI allows your retirement plan to stay intact. That is particularly important given the recent steep decline in portfolio value. The product, in effect, protects the balance of your account value. LTCI also protects income. Although you may qualify for Medicaid to pay for nursing home costs by transferring assets, your income (pension, social security, IRA and or 401k payout) cannot be protected. When buying this insurance, look for a long-term care specialist. Consider their training, educational credentials, and commitment to help solve your long-term care needs. The key is whether they talk first about a plan or a product. If they are interested in the plan, you are dealing with a professional. If they focus first on product and price, consider getting another opinion.

Long Term Care Insurance Essentials

If you want to get a long term care insurance quote, it is essential that you know what is involved. This article will show you six essential factors to take into consideration. If you want an ltci quote, there is so much information you will want to know about so that you can make an informed decision. This information is based upon factors such as what type of benefits you want to receive when using your policy.

A long term care insurance quote is contingent upon many factors and following are some of the points to consider. Your age and what type of benefits will cause your quote to vary.

When you are thinking about long-term care, you need to think about what types of benefits you will want. You can receive in-home service, nursing home care, or community based services to give you an idea.

Your age is going to determine the cost of the policy. If you are younger and buying a policy, you will almost certainly receive a lower premium.

The types of companies you approach for an ltci quote can help determine a different cost in your quote. You may be able to receive this quote through your employer.

The type of policy you choose will cause different quotes. You can choose a policy which will pay a maximum daily, weekly or monthly limit or one which pays up to a certain dollar amount.

The age at which you can start using your benefits will be a question that an insurance agent will ask you.

Daily benefits can also pay a part in the quote you receive from an insurance agent. If you want higher daily benefits, this will cause your ltci quote to be higher.

Hopefully this has given you good information regarding long term care insurance quotes. More information is always better so that you have an idea what to expect and you can have thought through what you want out of your policy.

A Look Into Our Lifestyles and Medical Issues

Deaths occur across our country every day due to illness and disease. There are some in this group who might have been saved if they had been insured with a health insurance plan and had earlier intervention. The right to health insurance should not only be a province of the wealthy and/or employed, it should be made available to all citizens.

There are countries within Africa where there is not access to medication and health care such as we have here in our country. So there are lots of preventable deaths there due to this lack of resources.

But here in the US, we have so much medical care available our health is not even questioned. As a result we treat our bodies with disregard by eating unhealthy. This causes deaths of our own doing, so to speak, and we are still not affording people lifesaving medications if they have no health insurance.

Honestly, we all need to start taking care of ourselves and begin eating and exercising as if we want to live instead of die. Many of the diseases in this country that require medical treatment are diseases like Diabetes, Heart Attack, Stroke, Cancer, and other vascular diseases. All of which by the way come from the lifestyle that we lead. It is not the equivalent of having a society overcome with AIDS or stricken by Swine Flu (H1N1).

What we need to realize is that if we were all doing our part to stay healthy, then we would only need to seek medical treatment for other miscellaneous illnesses and injuries that we sustain, and medical expenses in this country would go way down. We are committing a sort of mass suicide.