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Long Term Care
Long term care can best be described as the process of providing healthcare for persons who have chronic disease or disabilities that require continual/regular care over a long period of time. Long term care can include such types of care as:
- Adult day care
- Custodial care
- Home health care
- Hospice care
- Intermediate care
- Respite care
- Skilled nursing care
* Long term care generally does not cover hospital care
Nobody wants to admit that they can no longer take care of themselves. Long term care is something that is recommended if you find that you are no longer able to handle numerous everyday tasks, or daily living activities such as:
- Eating
- Cooking
- Cleaning
- Using toilet
- Dressing yourself
- Moving from 1 location to another (Within confines of your home)
- Lose voluntary control over urinary/fecal discharge
It is said that you are in need of long term care if you have difficulties with 2 or more of the aforementioned daily living activities.
It has been said that 1 out of 2 people will require some kind of long term care at 1 point or another in their life. A staggering 70% of people aged 65 or older will require long term care services. The average stay in a nursing home is between 2 and 2.5 years, with an annual average cost of $41,000. Could you afford it? Long term care insurance is an important policy to consider at a relatively young age so that you can save yourself from the possibility of an overwhelming future financial burden. Long term care insurance can help cover the costs associated with:
- Any kind of prolonged illness such as cancer
- Dementia or Alzheimer's disease
- Handicap or disability of some kind
- Degenerative conditions: heart attack/disease, Parkinson's, stroke, etc.
An important thing to keep in mind if you feel that you are far too young to consider investing in something like long term care insurance is the fact that 40% of people who are receiving long term care services are working age adults who are between the ages of 18 & 64. (Source: ltcfeds.com)
OTHER FACTS- who pays for long term care?
- Neither Medicare nor Medicaid cover any kind of nursing home care, along with standard health insurance policies or supplemental insurance vehicles.
- More often than not, people are forced to pay for long term care through liquid assets such as savings and other investments. When you consider the fact that long term care insurance can cost anywhere from $50 - $10,000, dependent on the type of policy/coverage you are in need of, it seems like a much more affordable investment that the possibility of forking over $41,000 per year.
- Avoid long term care insurance policies that have premiums that are 5% - 7% of your yearly annual income.
Continue your research and check out : LONG TERM CARE INSURANCE :
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