Financing Long Term Elder Care

According to ElderLifePlanning.com,

Federal and state programs such as Medicare and Medicaid were never designed to provide or pay for the chronic eldercare needs most of us encounter eventually, if we live long enough. The assumption underlying these programs is that they will pay for acute eldercare services such as hospitalization and outpatient care. As our population has aged over the past decade, payment to providers of home care and nursing home care for those with long-term care needs has been reduced in an effort to balance the budget.

The results of these cutbacks have been devastating and the future of long-term eldercare services for all but the affluent minority is bleak. The past two years alone have seen hundreds of home care agencies shut down because of financial problems nursing home owners have been filing for bankruptcy in alarming numbers and there is a severe shortage of both home care and nursing home staff due to low wages. We simply do not have the manpower available to provide the eldercare services that are needed to today.

Nonetheless, an increasing number of Americans will need to spend a few years in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. Some of us will only need these acute services for a short time, but others will need them for a decade or longer.

This section on "elder money" will focus on a variety of financing alternatives from a financial perspective rather than a legal or tax perspective.

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