Many people erroneously believe that long-term care services are covered under their Medicare or individual health insurance plans. It is NOT a covered benefit!

If you need help with custodial care, which includes supervision and help with day-to-day activities, (i.e., bathing, dressing, eating, caring for incontinence, toileting, transferring such as getting in or out of a bed or chair), you’ll need to pay for those expenses out of your own pocket if you don’t have any type of long-term care insurance. Sometimes family members or friends may step in to help periodically with caring for family members, but many are not willing or able to do so for as long as necessary.

It is estimated that nearly 70% of people aged 65 and over will need some sort of long-term care services or support. The questions is: how will you pay for it? Long-term care insurance may be the answer if you can’t afford to self-fund the expenses. Sometimes Medicaid can help pay for custodial care for those with low incomes, but only after they’ve exhausted most of their savings.

The main reasons people buy long-term care insurance are to protect their life savings, and to give them more choices for care. Long-term care insurance can cover care in your home, in a nursing home, an assisted living facility or at an adult day care center.

Some long term care policies may be combined with life insurance or annuity policies thereby providing more than one benefit. If you don’t use all of the monies in the policy for your long-term care needs, the remaining funds are paid to your beneficiaries. This negates the “if you don’t use it, you lose it” objection inherent with some stand-alone long-term care policies.

Call us to discuss the different options available for long-term care policies and for funding them.