The Long Term Care (LTC) Blog
Family History Starting To Count in LTC Insurance Qualifying
For years I’ve been asked if a person’s family history has any effect on their being able to obtain Long Term Care insurance. Up until now my answer was “not yet”! However, the answer is changing to yes. One insurer has asked about family history but it was not a deciding factor. Now another LTC…
Read MoreHelp Wanted – Home Health Aides
Another article appeared in the Wall Street Journal recently about home health care workers. If you want job security, long hours and low pay, this is the career for you. I have mentioned in prior posts about the shortage of workers caring for our elderly in the US. The turnover rate for home health care…
Read MoreProviders Sue Kids For Parents LTC Costs
From Financial Advisor magazine comes the following information: more than half the states have filial responsibility laws making adult children legally responsible for indigent parents’ bills. I’ve known about this for years, but never thought they would be enforced. However, now nursing homes, assisted living facilities, or even a publicly funded long term care agency can…
Read MoreI’m Going To Wait Before I Buy LTC Insurance
Why should a person buy LTC insurance at age 50, when they may not need care (typically) until age 80? Why pay premiums all those years? Who wants to spend money for 30 years of premiums. Seems like a logical viewpoint, why start paying premiums now when it could be 30 years before you might need care. As long as you stay…
Read MoreWho Will Have The Money?
I paraphrase an article in the Tuesday, July 22nd Wall Street Journal here, on spending and entitlements. The Congressional Budget Office long- term budget outlook released July 15 shows a 40 TRILLION dollar increase in debt over the next 2o years. The CBO simply stops projecting after 36 years as its models cannot conceive of…
Read MoreAs Baby Boomers Age, Families Have More Options For Providing And Paying For Their Care
Much has changed in the past two decades when it comes to Long-Term-Care options and how to fund them. Baby boomers and subsequent generations will need to plan for LTC in a different way than their parents in light of factors such as longer life spans, the uncertain future of entitlement benefits and rapidly rising…
Read MoreDear Carolyn: Inlaws Want Their Mom To Move In With Us
Dear Carolyn • Five years ago, my mother became unable to continue living alone, so she came to live with me, my husband and two young children. As she physically declined, she paid for upgrades to our home that allowed her to stay with us longer. However, in the last year she began to fail…
Read MoreWhat We Don’t Know About Long Term Care – Is A Lot
Americans over 40 — in other words, us — are dangerously unaware of our likely need for long-term care when we age and woefully ignorant about the costs, according to a new poll of adults in midlife and beyond. The telephone survey of 1,019 boomers over age 40 was conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for…
Read MoreThese Are The Good-Old-Days of Long Term Care
I heard this at a panel discussion featuring speakers from Wisconsin’s Health and Human Services department in Madison, the state capital, two weeks ago. We have the facilities, we have the staffing, we have the home care agencies to care for our older Americans – yet. The baby boomers are turning 65 at a rate…
Read More