Understanding the Underlying Factors of Long Term Care Costs
Relocating will not resolve your problem on long term care even though some people think that it will. Whether you travel north, south, east, or west you are bound to experience the high cost of care as long term care costs by state vary according to very basic factors.
U.S. states with bigger population in need of long term care (LTC) naturally have pricier LTC facilities. Expensive LTC is notable in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions as they cradle populous states as opposed to what can be found in other regions.
New York, for instance, is a state situated in the Mid-Atlantic which has a total population close to 20,000,000. Based on the 2011 population data of the U.S. Census Bureau for New York, the senior folks in this state who are 65 years old and older comprise 13.5% of the state’s overall population. That is about 2.6 million but once the prediction of LTC experts about New York’s expected elderly population in 2030 takes place, we can look at more than 4 million senior New Yorkers requiring care.
At present, in-home care recipients in New York are paying $21 hourly or $48,048 annually to receive assistance with their activities of daily living (ADL) from a home health aide. ADL here refers to eating, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, and continence. Should an individual need somebody to clean her house, cook her food, and do the laundry she has to pay additional $20 per hour to be able to receive homemaker services.
The annual growth rate of New York’s LTC costs has far exceeded the national average which is 1% for home health aide services and 2% for homemaker services. Now if you think New York is the only expensive state for LTC in the Mid-Atlantic area, there’s also New Jersey and Maryland.
Long Term Care Costs by State
If you study the cost of care in each state, notice that the rates of LTC settings do not go up altogether. In some states the rates of nursing homes are going up speedily, while in others nursing home rates have remained flat as the cost of assisted living facilities advance ceaselessly.
Noticeably, if it has a greater demand the cost of a specific type of LTC setting will go up. In-home care, for example, has maintained flat rates for the past years until it suddenly increased because more and more people have expressed their interest to receive care in the comforts of their own home.
However, in other parts of the country nursing home rates are increasing faster than home-based care. In Florida, for instance, the annual growth rate of a semi-private room of a nursing is 5% which is a percent higher than the national average because this type of facility is in demand not only among natural-born Floridians but also among individuals who call Florida as their adopted state.
Meanwhile, the cost of care in other states soars higher each year because people have to travel long hours and board so many vehicles just to get to the nearest LTC facility. Alaska is known for this as most of its residents have to even travel by air just to be accommodated in a nursing home.
Long term care costs by state are determined by different factors so do not think that there is a single state out there that offers affordable LTC. You will never find such thing in this time and age.
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