Paying for the Nursing Home – What You Need to Know About Long Term Care Insurance

A lot of people are rightly concerned about the costs associated with nursing home or extended care facilities. These expenses can easily reach upwards of $50,000 per year, and the cost only gets higher every year. If you are considering adding long-term care insurance to your estate plan, there are several issues you need to understand.

 

Medicaid and Medicare

In general, you cannot use Medicaid to pay for nursing home expenses until you meet specific Medicaid eligibility criteria. These essentially require you to have very few assets, so if you have any assets at all you are probably ineligible for Medicaid. Further, Medicare will only cover a very limited range of payments and that only applies after you have been hospitalized or have been put into a nursing home for the conditions for which you were hospitalized.

 

Buy When You’re Young

It becomes increasingly difficult to receive long-term care insurance the older you get. About half of those aged 80 or older will be denied long-term care insurance coverage, but if you apply well in advance of needing it, you can reap significant benefits.

 

Investigate Plans

Not all long-term care insurance plans are equal, and it is very important that you investigate each plan to determine if it matches your needs. If you are unsure what you need and what issues to look for, you should speak to your estate planning attorney or financial advisor before you agree to any plan.