What You Should Know About Long-Term Care

Introduction

Cost of Care

Risks

Who Pays

Medicare

Medi-Cal

Family

Self Insurance

LTC Insurance

More Info

In one out of four US households, there is at least one adult caring for someone 50 or older. More than 25 million Americans are family caregivers to ill, disabled and/or elderly adults.

Family caregivers are the bedrock of our national health care system. The market value of the services provided by family caregivers is over $200 billion dollars a year -- or 20% of the total for all actual health care expenditures. This trillion dollar system rests on an invisible fault line that is vulnerable to collapse -- the unpaid family caregiver.

Silent Struggles
In previous generations, daughters or daughter-in-law cared for their aging parents. Today, a majority of daughters are working and their incomes are key to family standard of living. Today's families are mobile, often spread over great distances, or separated by gridlock at key hours of the day. Today's older persons are living a lot longer than their parents, women are having their families later, and many daughters are sandwiched between caring for their kids and caring for their aging parents. These silent struggles often result in two people impacting the health care system -- the aging parent and the exhausted family caregiver.

Financial
Many women are in the middle of their own careers when they must give it all up to take care of mom. Others, just when their kids have left home or have entered college, and looking forward to going back to school themselves, establishing a small business, or getting established in a new career, suddenly see those aspirations evaporate because they now have to take care of mom or dad. Many previous "stay at home" moms looked forward to reentering the work force and earning their own retirement benefits, or possibly earning the minimum social security credits. Those simple hopes often become squashed when they must now continue to work as an unpaid family caregiver, not to their children, but to their own parents.

Caregiver Health
Family caregivers tend to develop acute illnesses earlier than others.  Many family caregivers die before the care receiver.  As much as you may want to take care of your mom or dad in your own home or theirs, please consider the risks to yourself and your immediate family--family caregiving can have unintended adverse consequences.  Make sure your support system is in place before you begin.  This support system must include ample time for yourself each day, professional help, and monthly respite.