Long Term Care Guide

What is Long-Term Care?
Are You Likely to Need Long-Term Care?
What Does Long-Term Care Cost?
Long-Term Care Policy Checklist
HIPAA's Impact On Long-Term Care Insurance
Tax Clarification
Consumer Protection Standards
Organizations

What is Long-Term Care?

Long-term care goes beyond medical care and nursing care to include all the assistance you could need if you ever have a chronic illness or disability that leaves you unable to care for yourself for an extended period of time. You can receive long-term care in a nursing home or in your own home, in the form of help with such activities as bathing or dressing.

Long-term care can be of help to a young or middle-aged person who has been in an accident or suffered a debilitating illness, as well as for older people.

Beyond nursing homes, there is a range of services available in the community to help meet long-term care needs. Care given by family members can be supplemented by visiting nurses, home health aides, friendly visitor programs, home-delivered meals, chore services, adult daycare centers, and respite services for caregivers who need a break from daily responsibilities.

These services are becoming more widely available. Some or all of them may be found in your community.Your local Area Agency on Aging or Office on Aging can help you locate the services you need. Call the Eldercare Locator at 800-677-1116 to identify your local office.

Are You Likely to Need Long-Term Care?

Life expectancy is on the rise. More than half of the U.S. population will require some type of long-term care during their lives-nursing home care, home health care, assisted living facility care, or rehabilitation facility care. One out of five Americans over the age of fifty is at risk of needing LTC in the next 12 months.

By 2020, one out of six Americans will be 65 or older and more than 12 million will require long-term care. However, it isn't just older persons, however, that need LTC. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, individuals between the ages of 18 to 64 represent 40 percent of those who currently need long-term care, and about 12 million people of all ages need help with some activities of daily living.

Most will be cared for at home; family members and friends are the sole caregivers for 70 percent of elderly people. But a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that people of age 65 face at least a 40 percent lifetime risk of entering a nursing home. About 10 percent will stay there five years or longer.

The American population is growing older, and the group over age 75 is the fastest-growing segment of the population.The odds of entering a nursing home, and staying for longer periods, increase with age. In fact, statistics show that at any given time, 22 percent of those age 85 and older are in a nursing home. Because women generally outlive men by several years, they face a 50 percent greater likelihood than men of entering a nursing home after age 65.

You may never need a nursing home. But the longer you live, the greater the chance that you will need some form of LTC.

What Does Long-Term Care Cost?

Long-term care can be very expensive. As a national average, a year in a nursing home is estimated to cost $40,000. In some regions, it can easily cost twice that amount.

Home care is less expensive but it still adds up. Bringing an aide into your home just three times a week - to help with dressing, bathing, preparing meals, and similar household chores - easily can cost $1,000 each month, or $12,000 a year. Add in the cost of skilled help, such as physical therapists, and these costs can be much greater.

HIPAA's Impact On Long-Term Care Insurance

Federal health insurance legislation has helped make private long-term care insurance a more viable option for paying for long-term care costs while preserving personal savings, choice and dignity. The Health Insurance Reform Act within the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) includes consumer protections for purchasers of long-term care insurance as well as clarifications that make treatment of private long-term care insurance identical to that of health insurance coverage.

Beginning January 1, 1997, individuals are able to include out-of-pocket expenses for long-term care and long-term care insurance premiums with their other itemized medical expenses on their annual tax returns. Long-term care and other medical expenses are deductible, to the extent that they exceed the federal government's 7.5 percent threshold of adjusted gross income. Also, the insurance benefits consumers receive, for the most part, will not be taxable as income.