Long Term Care for Our Elders – Who Will Pay?


Even though my father still lives with me, I’ve started the process of researching nursing homes and assisted living facilities so that I’ll be ready if the day ever comes when I won’t be able to care for him at home. Many long-term care policies have a long list of pre-existing conditions that will then make a person ineligible for coverage. Some people may be fortunate enough to have a large portion of their long-term care paid for using this method because they have long-term care policies in place (which are in and of themselves quite expensive to purchase).

Medicare, the federal health insurance programmer for people over 65, along with its Medicare Supplement Plans for 2022, can aid with payment in some cases, but only in the short term. For instance, it will only, at most, pay for 100 days of nursing home care AFTER a hospitalization that has been approved. It might not be essential for you to stay in the hospital for three days if you have a Medicare supplementary plan. For the first 20 days, they will cover everything, but after that, they will charge a deductible of roughly $120 per day for the remainder of the stay. If the patient is not eligible for Medicaid after the first 100 days, private monies must be used. The patient is eligible for another 100 days of nursing home care, but only AFTER an authorized hospital stay, if they are released from a nursing home facility and remain stable for 60 days in a row.

The patient must be receiving SKILLED nursing care and must continue to IMPROVE, which is the scenario’s unfortunate flaw. Medicare will stop paying if there is no improvement. The patient’s own funds are then anticipated to be used at that point. Assistive living is NOT covered by Medicare, either. The majority of assisted care facilities I’ve spoken with demand a 2-3 year guaranteed private fund payment before accepting Medicaid as payment. In other words, “we’ll spend all your money, but we swear we won’t throw you out.”

How then does Medicaid operate?

Medicaid is a benefit programmer that receives the majority of its funding from the federal government. Since each state is responsible for managing its own funds, each state has its own set of regulations. (To learn more about specific regulations, speak with an elder law attorney. Because there are so many rules and the planning must be implemented at least five years before a patient requires long-term care, I will add that speaking with a lawyer who specializes in this area of law is absolutely worth the money.) It is presumably the most often used type of payment.

Medicare Supplement Plans for 2022website because she is fully aware of the emotional and educational support that caregivers require and because she has firsthand experience with the helplessness, frustration, overwhelm, and even loneliness that caring for an ageing parent entails. Shelley aims to inspire and inform careers through its weekly newsletter, daily news updates, and monthly audio interviews with professionals in elder-care and related services. This will enable them to take the best possible care of themselves while caring for an ageing loved one (s).


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