After a lifetime of working for personal savings, possibly losing your financial assets to pay for expensive long-term care costs can be daunting. However, as expensive as the cost of a nursing home can be, you or your loved one may simply need care in nursing homes. If you are wondering about how to pay for nursing home care in Florida, we can help.
What Types of Nursing Home Care Options Are There?
Depending on one’s needs, there is a range of nursing care options. For each of these, our experienced elder care attorneys can help you plan. Below are some of the choices to consider for you or your loved one.
- In-Home Care: The individual can manage daily living in many ways but may need skilled nursing care for some personal care (i.e. bathing).
- Assisted Living Facilities: A lower level of care than a nursing home. This allows residents to live semi-independently on a property where housing units are often part of a larger system with a wide range of medical services, activities, dining, and other kinds of services.
- Skilled Nursing Facility: The highest level of long-term care facility. This offers health care for people who require 24-hour skilled medical care or memory care due to physical and/or mental incapacitation.
How Can I Pay for the Type of Nursing Care I Need?
Once you have determined the level of care needed, it is important to consider the costs of care. The average cost of a nursing home can drain one’s personal funds without proper planning. Below are some tips for managing that cost while maintaining the level of care needed for quality of life.
- Federal laws prohibit discrimination of admittance or level of care based on ability to pay. Some enter a facility from their current living situation while others enter a facility straight after a medical event that put them in the hospital.
- If you enter a facility as a private pay resident, you can switch to a “Medicaid bed” at a later date. This ability is based on meeting the criteria for Medicaid eligibility. Our elder care attorneys can help guide you through this process using various strategies of pre-planning or crisis planning to protect your personal wealth, such as creating a trust that addresses the “look-back period” on your estate or caregiver agreements with caregiver children.
- The majority of nursing home care is covered through government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. It is in the government’s best interest to keep individuals in the lowest level of care necessary. Due to the varied medical costs of skilled nursing homes, many states have financial assistance programs that help keep people either in assisted living homes and/or in-home care. There are also programs for care for veterans.
- Some supplemental insurance plans and a long-term care insurance policy may also help with long-term nursing home care costs.
Making decisions about long-term care needs for your loved one is difficult enough without also worrying about the thousands of dollars per month a nursing home costs. Your or your loved one’s life savings do not have to drain into a skilled nursing facility. Please contact our experienced elder care attorneys to help you plan for the care you need, the protection of your assets, and the peace of mind you desire.