Are You Ready to Face Maryland Long Term Care Costs?

Countless Marylanders are not sure how to deal with their retirement as they remain without a definite plan for their future.  Maryland long term care costs continue to rise and if one were to grow old in this state and expect care in 30 years time or so, he or she should have a realistic long term care (LTC) plan by now.

You wonder if there is such a thing as an unrealistic LTC plan.  Fact of the matter is, there is.  Those individuals who continue to convince themselves that they will receive the mode of care that they want from Medicaid because it’s a federally-funded health insurance program are thinking unrealistically.

Meanwhile, people who think that their families apart from Medicaid will shoulder the responsibility of taking care of them in the future are no doubt selfish to the nth power.  Why they are not only depriving their loved ones the opportunity to plan their lives correctly, they are also robbing the poor of their rights to receive care through Medicaid.

Statistics show that Medicaid’s big expenditures on long term care in the previous years can be attributed to the dependency of many middle-class Americans who’ve had the opportunity to plan for their LTC but failed to do so.

While one is in his heyday, he should seriously look into different ways to plan his future health care needs.  If he is contemplating buying a long term care insurance (LTCI) policy, he should purchase today because waiting or deferring his policy only increases his chances of being turned down by insurance companies.

Insurance firms that are marketing and selling LTCI policies have a very strict medical underwriting,  Most of them decline applications of people who may be at risk of requiring a higher level of care in the next five to 10 years.  So, it is very important to plan while you are still young, healthy and absolutely free of any kind of pre-existing condition.

Maryland Long Term Care Costs

Failure to plan the future exposes one to financial problems and mediocre LTC services.  He will have to make do with whatever Medicaid can provide since the cost of care in Maryland is not something to joke about.

For your information, families with loved ones in nursing homes are currently paying out $242 daily, on average, for a private room.  Those in semi-private rooms are required to pay $223 daily.

Meanwhile, in-home care and assisted living facilities in Maryland are not cheap either.  Families pay out $23 an hour or $190 daily for a home health aide to assist their elderly or disabled loved ones with their activities of daily living (ADL) such as eating, bathing, toileting, and dressing among others.  One-bedroom assisted living facilities, on the other hand, cost $3,300 a month according to Genworth Financial’s 2011 Cost of Care Survey.

As Maryland long term care costs continue to increase faster than the national average, Marylanders are advised to get long term care quotes, come up with a good plan today rather than wait for an event that will trigger their need for LTC and eventually drain their resources.

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