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Caring for Elder Orphans

October 8, 2019 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Care for ourselves or our parents is often provided by family members. In fact, 80% of home care is given by one or more members of the family. But what happens if there isn’t family available? No spouse, no children nearby (or none at all) — this is the world of Elder Orphans.

They may live full and active lives. But when it comes to making plans for this chapter of their lives, most of this growing population is dangerously unprepared. This is a tricky segment of people to even properly identify, so most reports are subjective. Still, this is still an important aging phenomenon that needs our attention.

Elder Orphans are Aging Alone

Let’s start by understanding how one becomes part of this growing category of seniors. For starters, understand that it can be totally voluntary. For example, a person may be happily single in their later years, thoroughly enjoying the freedom and privacy living alone affords them. Or they chose to build a life without children.

On the other hand, this may not be the life they originally signed up for. The death of a lifelong spouse or a divorce can leave someone surprisingly single when they need someone most. Even if they have children, they may live too far away to provide regular, consistent home care. Sometimes, parents are estranged from their kids.

As you can see, a variety of circumstances can lead to becoming an elder orphan. Regardless of how they got here, there are specific and unique challenges they’ll have to manage. And, like so many long term care issues, ignoring them doesn’t change the needs they create down the road.

Financial Insecurity and Health Concerns

There are a number of groups in Facebook that have sprung up in response to growing needs. The most popular one, Elder Orphans – Aging Alone, has over 9,000 members! The group serves as a resource for information to its members and also provides some emotional support.

The group conducted an informal survey, as reported by the Washington Post. Of the 500 people who responded, 70% revealed that they had not identified a person who could take care of them when they could no longer care for themselves.

Respondents shared some of their most pressing fears for their future:

25% worried about losing their housing
23% reported having at least one incident in the past year where they lacked enough money to cover basic needs
40% admitted to struggling with depression

The Power of Community

To prepare to be an elder orphan, you must establish a strong, supportive community, way in advance of need. You need to have brutally frank, explicit, frequent conversations with friends, family, and all fiduciaries about your wishes. My husband and I have taken this advice. We live in a Continuing Care Retirement Community, even though we’re both active and in great health. In addition to knowing each others wishes. Our fiduciaries know our wishes. We tell friends of our wishes.

As for the financial concerns… long term care expenses can be manageable and affordable, with the proper planning. The time for planning is Now. You don’t have to navigate your future alone. The resources you or your parents will need are well within your grasp.

When you’re ready to take that first step, click here to receive a free, no-obligation quote for your own long term care insurance policy.

Medicaid’s Woes Highlighted

October 14, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

This past month I’ve come across a few articles describing Medicaid’s woes, and highlighting peoples need to plan for funding their own long-term care, now!

This Washington Post story describes why our system is incentivized to discharge patients when they are still very needy, but their Medicare-paid re-hab benefits are exhausted. Medicaid can then often pick up costs, but it pays facilities poorly. This incentivizes facilities to admit the least needful and costly patients. In addition, “The Medicaid system is overly cumbersome and too slow to provide benefits.”

The true heroines of long-term care, paid home care providers, earn an average of $10.11 an hour, states this September New York Times article. About a third of these caregivers rely on food stamps and 28% rely on Medicaid for health insurance. Annual caregiver job turnover rate is 40-60 percent.

The article continues by stating caregivers at Medicaid-funded facilities got their pay raised to minimum wage: $7.15 per hour last year. Such caregivers are often overwhelmed with the sheer number of patients they must care for. “Ms. Walker left her job at a nearby nursing home because “sometimes you had 12 to 15 people to take care of,” she said. “You’re trying to feed everybody, give them baths, but a lot of people got neglected.”

This testimonial about Medicaid’s flaws on the receiving end of care is heart-wrenching, “When Roy Potter was weakened from postpolio syndrome and his wife, Joan, could no longer help him out of bed, a nursing home was “unthinkable,” said Ms. Potter, 83.

For a year, they paid private aides $14 an hour to come to their home in Mount Kisco, N.Y. When they could no longer afford that, Mr. Potter qualified for Medicaid, which pays the preponderance of home care costs in this country.

Over the next two and a half years, more than a dozen agency aides — some caring and competent; some not; some disappearing without explanation — cycled through their home, as did a number of short-term substitutes.

“A new person would come, and I’d have to walk them through everything all over again,” Ms. Potter said.

She grew increasingly anxious about whether an aide would show up. “Every morning I’d hold my breath until the doorbell rang,” she said. “Several times, I had to get in the car and drive to the agency and say, ‘Who is coming today?’”

Last year, when federal overtime provisions took effect, the agency cut back helpers’ hours.

She and her children succeeded in keeping Mr. Potter at home until he died in April, at 86, but finding and keeping help proved a continual battle.

At End of Life, Medicare Beneficiaries Spend Thousands Out of Pocket

September 14, 2012 by Honey Leave a Comment

At end of life, Medicare beneficiaries spend thousands out of pocket is the title of an article by Sarah Kliff, published on September 10, 2012, in the Washington Post.

This article reports on a recent study performed by Amy Kelly, a professor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

“As more Baby Boomers retire,” Kelley writes, “A new generation of widows or widowers could face a sharply diminished financial future as they confront their recently-depleted nest egg following the illness and death of a spouse.”

This is because Medicare is among the fastest growing line items in the federal budget, already paying out $500 billion a year in benefits. But Medicare does not pay for all health care expenses.

Dr. Kelly reports that a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries spend all of their wealth paying for medical and long-term care expenses during the last five years of their lives, with the average beneficiary spending $38,688.

My guess is that most of the $38,688 spending average comes from long-term care expenses, not from medical care or treatments. In her report, Dr. Kelly mentions that dementia patients have the highest out-of-pocket expenses. The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI) concurs and has plenty of statistics proving that the longest lasting, most expensive long-term care insurance claims are from dementia patients. Medicare does a decent (but imperfect) job of paying for acute medical problems and treatments, but Medicare’s biggest shortcoming is in the area of payment for long-term care.

It is tragic to have a long decline after a long, healthy, active life. It is doubly tragic to decline and then see your money fly out the window paying for long-term care expenses. This is rarely what anybody plans to do. However, if you don’t converse about long-term car ahead of time, you are failing to plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Medicaid Funding — Going, going… Gone?

December 26, 2011 by Honey Leave a Comment

Although our hearts are filled with the spirit of giving during this Holiday Season, our federal government and many states will increasingly resemble the Grinch in the very near future.

Facing the same dilemma of many other states whose Medicaid funds are drying up, Maine’s new Republican governor recently called the state’s entitlement system “a runaway train” (“Medicaid Cuts Are Part of a Larger Battle in Maine,” New York Times, Dec. 24, 2011, p. A11). His proposal to reduce Maine’s Medicaid rolls by 65,000 (18%) has generated outcries from citizens throughout the state. One specific cut is room and board at assisted living centers.

So Baby Boomers who are gambling on the availability of state Medicaid funds to defray the cost of their long-term care are seeing their odds of “winning” go down and down. In view of this Scrooge-like future, the need for US citizens to engage in sensible planning for their long-term care with reasonably priced Long-term Care Insurance is becoming more and more urgent!

Now that I have your attention, I’m sorry to add another statistic that we are all familiar with – 10,000 boomers are joining the Medicare rolls every day. In a Dec. 23, 2011 story in the Washington Post titled,“Medicare Spending Growth Rising Slower but Enrollment Will Rise,” we learn that projected growth in Medicare recipients will rise from 47 million in 2010 to 88 million in 2040. And medical costs for seniors also continue to rise.

So seniors who need long-term care will be competing for increasingly scarce funds with seniors who need medical care – a very sad predicament, indeed.

The clock is ticking, America!

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Caring for Elder Orphans

Elder Orphans are Aging Alone

Financial Insecurity and Health Concerns

The Power of Community

Medicaid’s Woes Highlighted

At End of Life, Medicare Beneficiaries Spend Thousands Out of Pocket

Medicaid Funding — Going, going… Gone?

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