Two out of three Californians will need long-term care.
What is the Reality?
More Californians will need long-term care in their lifetime than high blood pressure medicine. And yet, only one in ten Californians has taken steps to prepare for this fiscally and emotionally crippling reality. It’s a topic most of us would like to ignore. However, without long-term care planning, too many Californians lose their independence, are financially ruined and shift the burden of care to their children and loved ones.
What is Long-Term Care?
Long-term care is different from the rest of your health care, and it's not typically covered under health insurance policies, HMO plans, Medicare or Medicare supplemental policies. Some may also cover nursing home care or home care but typically only on a short-term or limited basis.
Long-term care includes personal care assistance, such as help with bathing, eating or dressing, that you require over a lengthy period. That's why it can be very expensive. Long-term care can range from simple assistance with activities in your own home or a residential care facility, or it can mean highly skilled care in a nursing facility. The possibility of needing long-term care due to an illness or physical disability is something most people would rather not think about. But as we get older and because we are living longer, the likelihood that we will need some kind of assistance is very real. Long-term care coverage will help you live your life with dignity and independence.
Here’s a checklist of the activities of daily living covered in long-term care:
- Bathing
- Dressing
- Toileting
- Transferring (from bed to chair)
- Eating
Continence
What is the California Partnership?
There are many different approaches to handling long-term care that accommodate the varying personalities, resources and values of every Californian. One solution, supported by the California Department of Health Care Services, is the California Partnership for Long-Term Care (Partnership). Established in 1994, the Partnership is a program designed to help Californians navigate long-term care issues.
The Partnership works with select private insurance carriers, who meet stringent standards set by the state, to develop unique insurance policies that protect you and your family from the devastating costs and hardships that are often associated with long-term care. All Partnership-approved policies contain vital features necessary for high quality long-term care insurance coverage including:
- Built-in automatic inflation protection of 5 percent annually.
- Care coordination and monitoring by licensed health professionals independent of the insurance company to develop a plan of care based upon your individual needs and resources.
- Once-in-a-lifetime deductible so that if you stop using policy benefits and then must use them again, you will not have to pay a second deductible.
- Waiver of premium for all days your policy pays for care in a nursing or residential care facility.
- Medi-Cal asset protection to ensure a portion of your assets are protected should you need to rely on Medi-Cal.
Emotional Challenges of Long-Term Care
Caregiving comes at a price. For many, there is a sense of obligation to care for a loved one, if not a necessity, and it is a need that’s increasing every year.
It usually starts with a phone call. And we find ourselves in a situation where we expectedly – or unexpectedly – have to care for a parent, spouse or child. Then it becomes an all-consuming responsibility that can leave the caregiver with little breathing room for their own health and well-being.
There are rewards to being a caregiver but we also have to address the challenges that come with this role. Caregivers will often find themselves in a situation that is exhausting and find it difficult to ask for help. And because of this, they often suffer from burnout, fatigue and isolation, and struggle with strained relationships with their own families. There’s also the conflicting feelings of guilt and resentment that creeps in during the journey of caregiving, and the family dynamics become more complicated as the family struggles with making decisions.
There is a heavy burden inherent with caregiving. It is important for caregivers to find other resources or support to help alleviate some of the responsibility.
Caregiving Resources
Cost of Long-Term Care
We never want to think about the possibility that we'll one day need help with dressing, eating, bathing or using the toilet, yet someone turning age 65 today has almost a 70 percent chance of needing some type of long-term care in their remaining years.1 When daily activities become difficult and you or a loved one need long-term care because of a chronic physical condition, such as arthritis, or a degenerative mental disease, such as Alzheimer's, who will pay for this care?
The duration and level of care varies from person to person, but even average long-term care costs can be out of reach for many Americans without some kind of financing in place. We have calculators to help you understand the financial costs, but you also have to weight the human costs of time, emotional stress and suffering. There's no amount of planning or money that will remove all of these problems, but simple advance planning can significantly reduce some of these challenges.
Long-term care can be very expensive and many people will need care for an extended period of time (one year or more).
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Nursing home costs in California averaged $290 a day in 2017, with the annual cost of care close to $110,000.
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On average, people require two years of long-term care, but one in five will need it for longer than five years.
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Generally, women need care for longer than men (3.7 years versus 2.2 years).
