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Are you sure you want to count on Medicaid to pay for LTC?

January 14, 2015 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

The bottom line, illustrated in this May, 2014 New York Times story, is that there’s been an increasing trend towards managed care for Medicaid patients. The patients featured in this story are Medicaid-paid long-term care (LTC) recipients. An increasing number of Medicaid providers are paid “capitated” rates. Capitated means they get a flat, per person allowance to care for each Medicaid recipient. In the Medicaid-paid LTC described in the article, providers are “cherry picking” out less needful, easier to care for patients, leaving more needful LTC patients with fewer options.

A reasonably priced long-term care insurance (LTCi) policy is a better option than planning on letting Medicaid pay for your long-term care.

Fighting to Honor a Father’s Last Wish: To Die at Home

October 1, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Tying into last week’s news of the new report titled “Dying on America” I will recommend two stories that bring the report into the most personal of terms.

Here’s a past blog I did describing a gripping, highly rated book called, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”. It puts what is imparted in the new report into very poignant, personal, compelling terms.

Just like the book “Knocking on Heaven’s Door, an article in the September 25, 2014 New York Times, called “Fighting to Honor a Father’s Last Wish: To Die at Home” is a heartbreaker.

Both the New York Times article and Knocking on Heaven’s Door put a human face on what “Dying in America” recommends, in the most poignant, heartbreaking ways.

The New York Times article describes a very beautiful, loving, highly functional American family. Despite the daughter’s tenacious, enduring fight to bring her father home, and at great personal sacrifice, our current system kept her father away from home. Most of his final years were spent bouncing between various forms of expensive, often negligent, in-patient care.

Home would have offered the father far more dignity and quality of life, much less suffering, at far less cost. The article beautifully, heartbreakingly, illustrates this.

Quoting from the article, “Many geriatric experts say that if the wasteful medical spending on this stage of life could be redirected, it could pay for all the social supports and services actually needed by today’s fragile elders and their families. Instead, public money has been shuffled in the same system, benefiting health care businesses but not necessarily patients.”

The changes recommended would most likely come at a net savings to the government. I hope reporting like this, combined with public lobbying, brings the recommended changes.

Promises That Can Bend Without Breaking

May 27, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Promises That Can Bend Without Breaking is the title of a Modern Love column in the New York Times. I am a faithful reader of Modern Love. Each column features the most intimate, interesting, and unusual aspects of loving relationships.

This column features a couple, married 28 years, who live in an assisted living facility. They are only 49 and 50 years old. He is perfectly healthy, but his wife is suffering from dementia that is comparable to mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

As odd and unusual as it is to see people this young living in an assisted living facility, this is the right solution for them. With this arrangement the husband can be with his wife and safely continue his full-time job.

The column reads like an obituary of sorts, and that’s what it essentially is. The couple had a wonderful, joyous, interesting marriage for most of their 28 years together until the wife’s health issues occurred about six years ago.

Because they have the income (he is still working) I must guess they can afford assisted living, which normally runs $4,500 – $6,000 per month. (Here is Genworth’s current Cost of Care Survey.) I am nearly certain she does not own long-term care insurance.

The author talks about the marriage commitment, “until death does us part.” No doubt this commitment is much easier for this couple to uphold because sufficient money is available.

This column also illustrates the fallacy of a common objection to long-term care insurance (LTCi) purchase: “I’m too young; I’ll wait to purchase LTCi.” Sadly, at age 43, the wife in this story became uninsurable. Then she began to need the care LTCi would have paid for.

People who are insightful and mature enough to purchase LTCi in their 30’s and 40’s save a lot of money on their LTCi by capturing much lower premiums. They also lock in their policies when they are still insurable, so they don’t have to deal with unexpected tragedies without the resources of an LTCi policy.

Many of Us Are Setting Ourselves Up for Undignified, Bleak Final Years

March 17, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

In my March 6, 2014 blog, I reported that TX ranks third in the country in the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and second in the country for number of Alzheimer’s deaths. It turns out, this could be wrong.

A provocative new study reported in the March 12, 2014 New York Times, suggests that Alzheimer’s disease causes six times as many deaths as the official statistics would indicate!

Here’s a quote from the new study:

“Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are under-reported on death certificates and medical records,” said study author Bryan D. James, PhD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Death certificates often list the immediate cause of death, such as pneumonia, rather than listing dementia as an underlying cause.” James added that attempting to identify a single cause of death does not always capture the reality of the process of dying for most elderly people, as multiple health issues often contribute.”

People with AD need more expensive long-term care than anyone else. According to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (www.aaltci.org), the number one reason people collect from long-term care insurance (LTCi) is due to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Insurance companies pay out more money on AD claims than for any other cause.

Unfortunately, most people don’t own long-term care insurance. Most people figure out how expensive, stressful, and time consuming caring for an AD patient is, the hard way.

Here’s additional news that does not bode well for most of us, who are woefully unprepared for retirement and long-term care.

It is unrealistic to expect the government to pay for long-term care. That’s the subject of a different blog.

Here’s a link to Terry Savage’s February 25, 2014 Huffington Post column describing why retirement is becoming a luxury fewer and fewer people can enjoy.

Here’s a March 12, 2014 New York Times article describing why income inequality often disables wealth transfers at death. From the article, “The top 1 percent of households owns about 35 percent of American wealth, more than the entire bottom 90 percent does.” At death, the wealth of the 1% is not trickling down to the rest of us.

Long-term care insurance (LTCi) can be reasonable in cost. To me, what’s not reasonable, is needing long-term care for anything but a short time, and not owning LTCi.

My advice is to read, heed, and be honest about your future by preparing responsibly for your long-term care.

Income Inequality Is Here

February 5, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

For years, the press has done faulty reporting on long-term care insurance (LTCi) and the public has been in deep denial of the need for it. Now we have a new enemy of responsible long-term care planning: income inequality.

A story in the February 3, 2104 New York Times titled, “The Middle Class is Steadily Eroding. Just ask the Business World” caught my eye. It also confirms my observations.

The article says there is no doubt our middle class is eroding, in a pretty dramatic way.

“In 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995. About 90 percent of the overall increase in inflation-adjusted income was generated by the top 20 percent of households in terms of income.”

“Investors have taken notice of the shrinking middle. Shares of Sears and J. C. Penney have fallen more than 50 percent since the end of 2009, even as upper-end stores like Nordstrom and bargain-basement chains like Dollar Tree and Family Dollar Stores have more than doubled in value over the same period.”

“Foot traffic at midtier, casual dining properties like Red Lobster and Olive Garden has dropped in every quarter but one since 2005, according to John Glass, a restaurant industry analyst at Morgan Stanley.”

“With diners paying an average tab of $16.50 a person at Olive Garden, Mr. Glass said, “The customers are middle class. They’re not rich. They’re not poor.” With income growth stagnant and prices for necessities like health care and education on the rise, he said, “They are cutting back.” On the other hand, at the Capital Grille, an upscale Darden chain where the average check per person is about $71, spending is up by an average of 5 percent annually over the last three years.”

Click here for another blog I did about income inequality.

Where am I going with this? Why am I reporting on this in a long-term care insurance blog?

Rationally, when finances are tight, insurance is actually more necessary than ever. Yet soaring income inequality evokes fear. When fear strikes, people panic. Business logic is inhibited.

I commonly see people who are suffering the effects of income inequality continue to spend money. It’s usually on “stuff”. A good many people can still afford long-term care insurance (LTCi) because we can get LTCi premiums to be very reasonable. But seeing their costs go up, their incomes remain flat and their jobs in possible jeopardy impedes people from doing the only sane, considerate, dignified thing, which is to buy reasonably priced long-term care insurance.

Request a Free, No-Obligation LTCi Quote

Are you sure you want to count on Medicaid to pay for LTC?

Fighting to Honor a Father’s Last Wish: To Die at Home

Promises That Can Bend Without Breaking

Many of Us Are Setting Ourselves Up for Undignified, Bleak Final Years

Income Inequality Is Here

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