Say I need a nursing home when I’m 70 (in 10 years). Medicaid will pay, but only after I am destitute. Is Long term Health Care insurance worth the price (which is pretty steep!)? What do you think? Opinions? Suggestions?
There are different levels for LTH insurance. All companies who offer it have menus to select from that include amount paid out per day, automatic increases (or not) for inflation, etc. We got ours at age 65 through the retired federal employees site, and it’s about $140/month total for both of us. We based our selection on factoring in retirement incomes to pick up any gap between the insurance and the cost of care. It seems to me to be worth it. We both come from families where members needed 24/7 care in their dotage, which placed a hardship on other family members. I have no intention of being in that position.
Consumer Reports had a good article about it a few years ago, which I suggest you find.
Here are some links:
Consumer Reports
LongTermCare.gov
My Aunt paid for Long Term Care insurance, thinking it would help pay for a nurse or caretaker in her home. It would not. Home care was not included at all and the amount per day that it would pay, under stipulated circumstances, for institutional care was slightly less than a third of the actual base cost.
Some may be a good deal, but you really need to know what you’re paying for and how it compares to actual costs in your area.
Mine includes home care and facility care. Your aunt must not have done proper legwork for her policy.
That’s completely true. She also had no will and made some very bad health care decisions. But those are separate stories.
On the other hand, it was the group policy available to her. The odds of her qualifying for a reasonably priced individual policy just before she retired were pretty low at the time she signed up.