Identifying the Areas of Your Long Term Care Plan
For most people, long term care planning is something that can wait. They are confident that their homes will serve as the perfect solution in case they end up needing care someday.
One’s home equity, according to financial advisers, cannot be a solution to his long term care (LTC) needs as the cost of care today is way higher than the average selling price of real estate properties.
Anyone who resorts to selling his house will only end up frustrated because the proceeds will only be enough to cover a year’s stay in a nursing home. That’s assuming he gets to sell his house at the price of $81,030, which is the median annual rate of a private nursing home room according to Genworth Financial. Now if he is going for a lower bid then God only knows where he will turn for help afterwards.
Medicaid, a federally and state regulated health insurance program, used to generously provide nursing home coverage to middle-class Americans after they have successfully satisfied the program’s income and asset requirement. However, since it was restructured by the government all aspirants will have to pass through a series of assessment and verification before they can obtain approval for nursing home coverage.
Young people are advised to do the right thing if they want to receive quality care someday and that is to plan. Many people take LTC planning as a complicated matter because they focus so much on the exterior factors affecting this specific type of plan. LTC specialists say the best way to plan is to point out your personal health care requirements first. Once you’ve accomplished this phase, that’s the only time that you should go out and find ways to enhance your LTC plan.
Proper Long Term Care Planning
Identification of future health care requirements can easily be accomplished by visiting a doctor regularly. Just so you know, licensed physicians do not simply draw conclusion from an individual’s current lifestyle and diet, instead they correlate all gathered pieces of information with his family’s health history.
For instance, a vegetarian who’s also a gym regular may seem healthy exterior wise. Unfortunately, he is regularly exposed to smokers whom he cannot avoid since he owns a bar downtown. Upon looking up his family’s health history, his doctor finds out that he had aunts and uncles who succumbed to lung cancer. Although not a smoker himself, this vegetarian is at risk of the said lung disease as he inhales secondhand smoke day in and day out in his bar.
Recognizing what may potentially befall your health in the future will make it easier for you to identify the level of care or type of LTC setting which you will likely need. LTC settings vary in cost as each of these offers distinct services.
For example, in-home care normally focuses on custodial care only but being financially equipped allows some people to remain in their homes despite the worsening of their health conditions. Their money manages to get them the necessary nursing home monitoring equipment and first-rate nurses in the industry.
Now even if you are not affluent, through long term care planning you can also choose to stay home someday even if your condition requires high levels of care. So start working on your plan today.