How Much Does Long Term Care Cost? What about Medicaid / Medicare and Long Term Care?
How much will long-term care cost?
Anyway you look at, the answer is a lot of money.One year in a nursing home can easily cost $50,000. In some regions, it could be twice that amount.
Home care is less expensive but it still adds up. Bringing an aide into your home just three times a week (two to three hours per visit) to help with dressing, bathing, preparing meals, and similar household chores will probably cost $1,000 a month; that's $12,000 a year. Additional skilled help, such as physical therapists, can make the total much greater.
In 2001, the National Center for Assisted Living estimated that assisted living facilities charge an average monthly fee of $1,873, including rent and most additional fees. Some residents in the facility may pay significantly more if their care needs are higher. According to the new service Reuters, the average nursing home cost is $61,000 a year (source: Reuters, 12/13/04)
Who pays? What What about Medicaid / Medicare and Long Term Care?
For the most part, the people who need the care pay the bills. Individuals and their families pay about one-third of all nursing home costs out-of-pocket. Generally, long-term care isn't covered by the health insurance you may have either on your own or through your employer.What about the government? Generally, neither Medicare nor Medicaid cover long-term care.
People over 65 and some younger people with disabilities have health coverage through the federal Medicare program. Medicare pays only about 12 percent for short-term skilled nursing home care following hospitalization.
Medicare also pays for some skilled at-home care, but only for short-term unstable medical conditions and not for the ongoing assistance that many elderly, ill, or injured people need.
Medicare supplement insurance (often called Medigap or MedSupp) is private insurance that helps cover some of the gaps in Medicare coverage. While these policies help pay the deductible for hospitals and doctors, coinsurance payments, or what Medicare considers excess physician charges, they do not cover long-term care.
Medicaid - the federal program that provides health care coverage to lower-income Americans - pays almost half of all nursing home costs. Medicaid pays benefits either
immediately, for people meeting federal poverty guidelines, or after nursing home residents exhaust their savings and become eligible. Turning to Medicaid once meant impoverishing
the spouse who remained at home as well as the spouse confined to a nursing home. However, the law permits the at-home spouse to retain specified levels of assets and income.
More in this Plain Talk I Need To Know series
(Home) Plain Talk about Long Term Care Insurance
What is Long Term Care?
Will you need long term care, and what are the chances?
How Much Does Long Term Care Cost?
What is Insurance for Long Term care?
Where Do I Buy Long Term Care Insurance?
How Much Does Long Term Care Insurance Cost?
Contact our editors for questions, corrections and/or linking. Please include your city/state/zip in your message: . Our Privacy Statement.