Do You Know Long-Term Care? (Part 3/3)

Long-term care is a range of services and supports you may need to meet your personal care needs. Most long-term care is not medical care, but rather assistance with the basic personal tasks of everyday life, sometimes called Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Long-term care insurance helps cover the costs of home and nursing care when you are not able to perform ADLs on your own.

As we continue celebrating LTC Awareness month in the final week of November, we want to see how much you know about long-term care. The goal of LTC Awareness month is to create heightened awareness of the need for long-term care and the importance of planning options available to Americans and their families.

Now we want to ask: are the following four statements[1] true or false?

1. Nursing home expenses for Alzheimer’s Disease patients are covered by Medicare.

  Medicare provides few benefits for the LTC services required by most people with Alzheimer’s Disease. Full reimbursement for skilled nursing home care is limited to 100 days per benefit period, after which time the patient must contribute to the costs. Also, Medicare pays nothing if the patient requires only custodial care.[2]

2. The average length of stay in a nursing home is more than four years.

  The average length of stay in a nursing home is 2.4 years.[3]

 

3. Nearly 40% of the long-term care population is under the age of 65.

  41% of people receiving LTC are between the ages of 18 and 64.[4]

 

4. On average, a one-year stay in a nursing home costs about $30,000.

  On a national average, a one-year stay in a nursing home costs about $86,000.[5]

 

To learn more information about LTC and your LTC needs, please contact Keith Eig.

 

 

 

[1] Statements given by John Hancock’s Long-Term Care Quiz.
[2] Medicare and You, 2006. CMS Pub. No. 10050, p. 15, 2006.
[3] The Lewin Group, “Nursing Home Use by ‘Oldest Old’ Sharply Declines” November 2006.
[4] Georgetown University Long-Term Care Financing Project, Long-Term Care Financing Policy Options for the Future” June 2007.
[5] John Hancock 2011 Cost of Care Survey, conducted by LifePlans, Inc.