Paying for LTC

Long-term care services include personal care services like bathing, doing household chores, and other activities, to help you stay independent in your community. Long-term care also includes community services, such as meals, adult day care, and transportation services. Residential facilities, such as assisted living facilities and nursing homes, also provide long-term care services along with housing.

Depending on how much you need, these types of services can be expensive. Medicare and other health insurance do not include most long-term care services, so planning for how you might pay for long-term care becomes important. If you have fairly low income and savings, you may qualify for Medicaid, the federal public program that pays for most long-term care services. Other federal public programs, such as the Older Americans Act, and state-funded programs, pay for long-term care services, but, like Medicaid, these programs cover services for people with high levels of disability and low income and savings.

With 70 percent of us needing long-term care services at some point during our lives after turning age 65, and the limited coverage of public programs, there is a good chance you will have to pay for some or all of the services out of your personal income and savings. Even if you only need a little assistance at home with personal care, paying for long-term care out of your personal income and savings can be difficult. For example, you would pay more than $19,000 on average for a home health aide to assist three times a week, in 2010.