According to Florida’s Agency For Health Care Administration, the average cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home in South Florida is approximately $9,485 a month, and the average length of stay is approximately 3 years. That’s more than $340,000.
Individuals with dementia, on average, stay nearly twice as long and so the costs double.
There are three ways to cover the cost of this care. The first is to pay privately, out of pocket. Most people cannot afford to do so. The second is to secure sufficient private long term care insurance. The older you get and the more infirm you become, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to do so. The third way to pay for long term care is by securing Medicaid eligibility. Unlike Medicare, which does not cover long term care costs, Medicaid’s ICP program can pick up the cost of long term care.
Long Term Care Planning is the process of bringing about eligibility for this program as well as other programs that can help pay for care.
To be clear, the goal of Long Term Care Planning is not to shoe-horn anyone into a nursing home; nobody wants to go to a nursing home. Nobody wants to see their spouse or their parent in a nursing home. Rather, the goal of Long Term Care Planning is simply to put an advance plan into place so that if that level of care is required, it can be secured affordably.
Long Term Care Planning is designed to shelter and protect assets, because money buys care, and with better care comes a better quality of life. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and then live and be well.
QUALIFY AND APPLY FOR MEDICAID
Do you need help paying for care so that you can afford to stay at home? Are you trying to figure out how to foot a $11,000 monthly nursing home bill? If you’ve heard that Medicaid can help, that’s true. If you’ve heard that it will take five years to qualify, that’s not. Learn how to improve your quality of life by securing the best possible long term care if and when it is needed, affordably.
