You’ll Need To Save An Average of $135,000 For Long-Term Care. But Many Will Pay Much More On average, 65- year-olds need to put aside $135,000 to pay for long-term care in their old age, according to a new report by the actuarial firm Milliman Inc. But beware of the average: About 43% of older adults will need no paid [...]
Three things are true about long-term care, though many Americans don’t want to believe it: You are very likely to need it in old age. It will cost a lot more than you think. And, no, Medicare won’t pay for it. Two recent studies help explain how Americans think about the financial aspects of their long-term care needs, and why [...]
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has backed an earth-shattering idea: For the first time, traditional Medicare would pay for personal assistance at home and related long-term care. Currently, only Medicaid and certain Medicare managed care programs provide long-term care benefits. Harris endorsed the idea in an appearance on the television show The View and her staff heavily promoted her initiative [...]
Minnesota and Washington are the states that provide the best services and supports for frail older adults, younger people with disabilities, and their families, according to a new study by AARP. The worst performers: Alabama and West Virginia. AARP defines superior supports and services as those that are affordable and accessible, give families a choice of high-quality and safe care [...]
Your mom has been hospitalized for two weeks following a stroke. One morning, she’s told she’ll be discharged by the end of the day. Mom calls you in a panic. You rush to the hospital and ask for advice. Instead, you get a much-copied list of local skilled nursing facilities and a wave good-by. This scene is played out thousands [...]
If you are 65 or older, should you expect to need a significant level of long-term care? And can you predict that need? The short answers are yes. And no. You absolutely should expect to need that care. And, unless you already are very poor, you should plan to pay for at least some of it. But it is impossible [...]
Every conversation I have with operators of senior living facilities and home care agencies quickly pivots to one issue: A desperate shortage of care workers. The problem isn’t new. Low pay, low status, and physically and emotionally demanding work has plagued the long-term care industry’s ability to hire for years. Highly restrictive Trump-era immigration policies further shrunk the supply of [...]
FDA’s decision last week to approve a new “Alzheimer’s disease treatment,” and the buzz that surrounds it, is a symptom of all that is wrong with the way we care for frail older adults in the US. Rather than providing the supports that people with chronic conditions desperately need, and that evidence shows works, we prefer to chase butterflies. In [...]
With great fanfare, President Trump announced yesterday that his administration would deliver about two weeks’ worth of masks to nursing homes by the Fourth of July . And he’d stand up a commission to study quality and safety in nursing homes. All just in time to celebrate May as “Older Americans Month.” The masks apparently are going only to nursing [...]
It is a terrifying time to be caring for an aging parent or other family member who needs assistance with physical or cognitive limitations. You are unable to visit your loved ones in care facilities. It is a struggle to find aides to care for them at home. You worry about them contracting the potentially deadly coronavirus. You worry about [...]