A nursing home is necessary for elderly individuals (or disabled or ill individuals) who cannot take care of themselves any longer. However, a nursing home often can cost a lot of money, making placing a loved one in a nursing home rather difficult. In recent years, nursing home costs have gone up an astronomical 10 percent, making residing in nursing homes more costly and expensive than ever.
Expert Insight
According to Pacific Life Insurance Company, nursing home costs, on a daily basis, average about $168. This daily cost adds up to approximately $61,320 annually. This number is up an astounding 10 percent from just a couple of years ago. This increase can have a negative and serious impact on senior citizen retirement savings funds. Medicare and many HMOs will not pick up the entire cost of nursing homes, and many people discover that they have to end up paying the vast majority of the fees themselves.
Considerations
Many people do not realize that Medicare and Medicaid offer only limited assistance for patients requiring long-term care in nursing homes. For every benefit period, Medicaid will cover only up to 100 days of nursing home care. After 20 days of residing in a nursing home, beneficiaries are required to pay a coinsurance fee. In the early 2000s, that daily fee was over $100. Medicaid provides coverage for about 70 percent of those residing in nursing homes, but they are usually required to get rid of all their financial assets before the program will foot the bill.
Types
There are many different types of ways in which individuals cover their nursing home costs. These ways include Medicare, Medicaid, using their own personal resources and money, Medicare Supplemental Insurance (private insurance), managed care plans (will work if the nursing home has a contract in place with the plan) and long-term care insurance (a private policy).
Geography
Consumer Affairs have reported that the highest rates for nursing homes in the United States have been reported in the state of Alaska, where the approximate price for living in a nursing home for an entire year was a massive $204,765 (rounding out to about $564 on a daily basis). The lowest nursing home fees were found in Shreveport, Louisiana, costing about $36,135 yearly and $99 every day.
Potential
Many people look to protect the homes and assets of their families from astronomical nursing home costs. Many people even try to hide these costs from health care provides in order to protect them from being seized. There are also many lawyers out there that help individuals and their families with asset protection in order to increase the amount of possessions that can be kept, and decrease the amount of them that will be taken away to pay for nursing home costs.
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