What if you were enjoying a comfortable retirement and without warning, found yourself with an expense of $7,000 or $8,000 per month?
Could you pay for that out of your savings? For how long?
It’s an all-too-common scenario when someone needs long-term care as a result of an illness or injury.
Long-term care insurance can help preserve your retirement savings and protect your family from having to pay for your care.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that about 70 percent of people older than 65 will need long-term care services at some point.
How much does long-term care cost?
First, it’s critical to understand how much long-term care costs. Expenses vary by where you live, whether you’re cared for in your home or in a nursing facility and, of course, how long you need care
Here are some numbers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that might hit home with you:
- $6,844 – average cost per month of a semi-private room in a nursing home – also known as long-term care facility or convalescent care facility.
- $7,698 – average cost per month for a private room in a nursing home.
- $3,628 – average cost per month for a one-bedroom unit in an assisted living facility.
- About $21 – average cost per hour for a home health aide.
- About $20 – average cost per hour for homemaker services.
Medicare rarely helps with the expenses
Keep in mind that Medicare doesn’t pay for the majority of long-term care services, including nursing home stays. It only pays for specific situations, such as people who require rehabilitative care or skilled services.
Without Medicare pitching in to shoulder at least part of the burden, some older adults’ retirement savings are depleted quickly when long-term care is needed.
It’s not just older adults, or just nursing homes
It’s common to think of long-term care affecting retirees, but 37 percent of Americans now receiving long-term care are between the ages of 18 and 64, according to medicare.gov/what-medicare-covers.
About 80 percent of long-term care is now provided in the patients’ own homes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Care at home can be less costly than a nursing home stay, but still averages more than $46,000 per year, a figure included in a recent Genworth Financial survey.
Long-term care insurance attributes
Long-term care insurance can provide:
- Money to help pay for long-term care expenses.
- Help in maintaining your independence.
- A choice in how and where care is provided.
Another long-term care option
In addition to long-term care insurance, there’s another way to help pay for long-term care – a life insurance policy with a long-term care rider.
It offers coverage in the event you need long-term care. But if you don’t, the policy pays the life insurance benefit to your beneficiaries upon your death. So either way, you can help your family by having this kind of coverage.
Talk to us for more info, including pricing options
Talk to Everence to learn more about and compare long-term care insurance products, which we offer through a third-party brokerage arrangement.
The younger you are when you choose to get long-term care insurance, the lower your premiums will be and the less likely you are to be denied coverage.