How Do I Create a Long-Term Care Plan in Phoenix?

Taking care of yourself isn’t too hard when you’re an adult. Sure, there are a lot of challenges that life throws at you but people tend to have a good forty-year period where they are capable of handling those challenges. Unfortunately, we don’t tend to do quite as well once we start getting up there in age. There is no one set age at which your body just starts to shut down–our bodies can betray us at any time. But, generally speaking, they wait until we’re 65+. That’s when we need to have a plan in place for long term care needs.

Lots of people need additional help as they get older. Nursing homes and live-in nurses are two of the more common solutions to solving the problem of needing additional help when older. Too many of us don’t want to or just don’t bother to think about the costs associated with this kind of help when we’re younger. But we should. Long-term health care is incredibly expensive and there are lots of people who simply can’t afford it. The most upsetting part of this is that, with a little bit of thinking about the issue before it arises, you can put together a long-term health care plan. We’ll discuss what goes into a long-term care plan, why long-term care is necessary, the value of long-term care insurance, and some potential alternatives below.

Why Would I Need Long-Term Care?

Long-term care is not one singular discipline. For example, an individual might just need a nurse to come by every couple of days to ensure that their medications are properly managed. This would be a rather mild inconvenience for somebody and there are lots of people who may even take comfort with the added social interaction.

But long-term care could also refer to the plethora of services required by somebody suffering from bad dementia. These individuals can’t take care of themselves and they may require a nurse to live with them full time. Their illness could even be so bad as to require them to live in a home with multiple nurses and staff that can help not only with their medical needs but also bathing, cooking, cleaning, and other acts of daily living.

Ultimately, this makes the idea of long-term care a little muddier. If we can’t define exactly what it looks like, then maybe it’s easier to define it by its purpose. The purpose of long-term care is to provide the care and assistance that an individual needs but is no longer able to manage themselves. With this definition we can also delve into who long-term care is there to support.

In the introduction, we touched on the fact that most of the people in need of long-term care are elderly or on their way to that age bracket. But this does not mean that they are the only people that need long-term care. The young can also suffer from illness and injuries that leave them requiring long-term care.

This care is expensive and so a long-term care plan is necessary.

What Is Long-Term Care Insurance?

One of the best ways you can prepare for the future is to purchase long-term care insurance. This functions surprisingly similiar to car insurance. You pay into it each month, or yearly depending on the particulars of your insurance contract. What you are purchasing is a “just in case” type of protection.

You don’t buy car insurance because you are expecting to get into an accident. You buy car insurance just in case you get into an accident. Long-term care insurance is the same way, only now the “in case” that you’re preparing for is that eventually you will require long-term care in order to get by. It’s one of those things where if you don’t ever need it, you’ll probably feel like you wasted some money. But if you do end up needing it and you didn’t have it, then you’re going to really have wished that you did because it would help you avoid a lot of pain and frustration.

Long-term care insurance can be used to cover bills like:

  • The cost of staying in a nursing home or an assisted living facility
  • The cost of an extended stay in the hospital
  • Recurring doctors’ visits
  • Surgeries
  • Medications
  • Physical therapy
  • Chemotherapy
  • Live-in nurses
  • And a lot more

The money that goes into this policy doesn’t come out until you need some kind of long-term care. While one of the main alternatives to long-term care insurance is to set aside money on your own, this can be difficult or impossible for many people. Even those who are good at saving money may come up against disasters that eat up that money: Tree fell on the house? Well, I’m still healthy now so why not take it out of the savings account? Suddenly those savings aren’t quite as large as you needed them to be by the time you’re in need of long-term care yourself. More to the point, the costs of long-term care can be so high that they would wipe out substantial savings very quickly.

What Alternatives are there to Long-Term Care Insurance?

There are a number of alternatives to long-term care insurance that could be made use of to create a long-term health plan. Saving money is one, but we just saw the downsides of that one.

Another option, perhaps the most commonly chosen of all, is to have a family member or loved one look after the long-term care. This doesn’t cost any additional money and it could even make for some important and valuable bonding time. It can’t be denied that there can be great gains found through this option.

But it can also lead to sleepless nights, frayed relationships, and even, in the worst cases, abuse and neglect. Long-term care can be a full time job, which is likely more than most people can afford to commit. It’s a bit of a crapshoot and it can be hard to predict whether the experience will be a positive or a negative one.

The final option is to rely on the government program of Medicaid, called ALTCS in Arizona, to foot the bill for long-term care. The problem with this approach is there are extreme limits placed on income and assets in order to qualify for ALTCS. Unless you are capable of navigating the complexities of Medicaid planning, you’re going to have to spend down virtually all of your assets before you qualify.

Which Option is Best for Me?

Deciding which option is best takes a lot of time and consideration. You need to weigh the pros and cons of each available option and seek out advice. In a case like this, your best bet is to speak to an attorney with experience in not only Medicaid/ALTCS planning, but also the ins and outs of long-term care insurance. They can help you with a long-term care plan, as well as many other important areas where you could get your estate in order. If you’re already thinking about the future, why not get everything ready?