Monthly Education Focus: Long-Term Care
This month, we are focusing our educational series on long-term care. What are the risk factors that affect the likelihood of a person needing long-term care?
Long-term Care providers provide services that can take place in the home or in a facility. These services include.
- Home-based and community-based carePersonal care to assist with Activities of Daily Living (ADL’s)
- Homemaker services to help people stay in their home by providing assistance with activities like meal preparation, food shopping, laundry, and housecleaning
- Home health care provided by trained medical personnel
- Adult Day Care
- Respite Care – to help relieve family caregivers when they are caring for loved ones with terminal or severe chronic illnesses
- Hospice Care
- Skilled nursing care facilities
- Residential care facilities for the elderly (different from skilled nursing facilities in that they don’t provide medical care)
- Continuing care retirement facilities and other retirement home communities
The costs of Long-term care depends on the area you live in and the type of services needed. In California, for instance, today’s median annual cost for various types of long-term care services currently are:[2]
- $52,624 for home health aide services
- $48,000 for care in a residential care facility for the elderly (RCFE)
- $91,250 for a semi-private room in a skilled nursing facility (SNF) Keep in mind that these are the amounts needed to pay for care today
- These costs are rising rapidly at an annual compound rate between 2-5 percent inflation.
As one can see, the cost of long-term care expenses can be catastrophic to one’s financial situation.
- Stand-alone policies that provide long-term care insurance only, or provide long-term care benefits as a rider to another policy like an annuity, life insurance, or critical illness contract
- Group long-term care insurance (Check the group LTC insurance “Certificate of Coverage” to understand the benefits and insured’s rights under the plan)
- LTC insurance premiums paid by the employer on behalf of the employee are 100% tax deductible, and the employee can exclude 100% of the premiums paid from their gross income.
Cost of Long-term Care expenses
https://www.genworth.com/about-us/industry-expertise/cost-of-care.html
2016 CA Dept of Insurance Long-term Care Rate & History Guide
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/105-type/95-guides/05-health/01-ltc/index.cfm
There are additional state-run programs designed to help people remain in their home and receive care rather than having to enter a residential long-term care facility. In California these agencies are:
