Author

Thomas Wiest

CEO, Aspirience Home Care

According to a recent study I read, about 34% of elderly U.S. residents who have long-term care insurance and claimed benefits used it last year to pay for in-home care, according to a study released last week by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.

Nearly 30% of long-term care payments in 2006 were for assisted living costs, and about 36% of payments were for nursing home care, the study found. Total payout for long-term care in 2006 amounted to $3.3 billion. Wow, $3.3 BILLION!

One of the key findings of the study was that “although long-term care insurance is closely linked in consumers’ minds with nursing home care,” people are more likely to use their long-term care insurance to pay for in-home care or assisted living facilities. That’s the part I thought was interesting and amazing. 34% or a full third of all claims go to pay for in-home care!

The article estimates that about eight million U.S. residents have long-term care insurance through an individual policy or employer-sponsored plan. This type of insurance is relatively inexpensive and easy to disburse payments to home care providers for services.

Here’s another interesting and amazing statistic:

Nearly 80% of all long-term care is provided in-home, most of it by family members at no cost. The care that “29 million Americans provide for free amounts to an estimated $306 billion” annually, according to a similar study. There’s actually, two interesting facts here: 1) that 80% of all long-term care in provided in-home and 2) most of it by family members at no cost.

Here’s another statistic:

Medicaid spending for in-home care has tripled between 1996 and 2005 to $22.7 billion. While Medicaid will provide aides for in-home care, they are limited to services including light house cleaning, errands or bathing and are not permitted to provide skilled nursing care, such as help with feeding tubes. Long-term insurance will pay for those types of needs though.

It’s important to know, you can use your long-term insurance to help pay for in-home care.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 6:01 am and is filed under Home Care, Aging, Disabilities, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.