Medicaid and long-term care insurance planning

Long-term care is assistance with activities of daily living. Incapacity can occur at any age, but generally it occurs after age 65. The setting may be the home, an adult day care center, a retirement home, a perpetual care facility, an assisted living fa experience, depending on the setting. Regardless of the cility, or a nursing home. The care givers will vary in skill andsetting and skill level of the care givers, the expense for all but the wealthy will eat away at savings. The average daily rate of a nursing home in Massachusetts is $300 a day. Multiply that by 365 days and in one year, the minimum cost would be $109,500.

The Massachusetts Guide on financing long-term published in June 2004 shows the following:

                 Probably that a 65 year old will be in a nursing home at some time during the rest of his/her life:

Put it this way, a person has at least a 10 times greater chance of going into a nursing home or other facility than of having his or her home burn down. Yet people insure their homes without a second thought. With Medicaid being increasingly difficult to become eligible for, and as a result, a means of last resort, long-term insurance needs to be taken seriously.

We become involved in planning for potential incapacity by analysis of the amount and ownership of assets, the projected retirement income, the Medicaid eligibility rules, the amount of long-term care insurance coverage, insurance affordability, transfers of assets that have occurred within the lookback period, transfer of assets that should occur, types of existing trusts, medical condition(s) of children, potential caretaker children, ages of children, the existence of durable powers of attorney, healthcare proxies, wills, etc.