Not that I need it yet, but I'm starting to learn about long-term care insurance -- and I'm taking you all along for the ride! I know, it's a subject right up there with disability insurance, annuities, and budgeting on the excitement scale, but it's something that has to be addressed. Why? Consider these facts on long-term care insurance from Kiplinger's:
- Almost half the population will need long-term care at some point.
- The average length of stay in a nursing home is 2.5 years.
- The average annual cost for a private room at a nursing home is $74,095, according to MetLife Mature Market Institute.
- The average hourly cost of a health aide who gives in-home care is $19. It's double that for a licensed nurse. If you needed round-the-clock care from a nurse, you would have to pay more than $300,000 a year.
- You can't get long-term care insurance once you have a problem that requires long-term care.
- Long-term care usually involves non-medical help with such daily tasks as bathing and dressing. Health, life and disability insurance won't pay for that, nor will Medicare. But long-term-care insurance will.
- People who don't have coverage have to pay out-of-pocket until they run out of money and become eligible for Medicaid. However, a new law tightens the purse strings of the program that helps families pay for nursing-home care. And that makes owning long-term-care insurance even more of a necessity.
If these facts are to be trusted (and if they are in Kiplinger's, I trust them to at least be reasonably accurate), then we all need to know the ins and outs of long-term care insurance. Stay tuned -- I'll be posting more on this topic in the weeks to come.
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