Long-term care consists of a range of services and support for your personal care needs. Most long-term care is help with basic personal tasks of everyday life that consist of 6 activities of daily living;
1. Bathing
2. Dressing
3. Using the toilet
4. Transferring
5. Incontinence
6. Eating
At this point there is about a *69% chance that you will need some kind of long term care during your lifetime. The typical range of services include the following;
· In-home nursing care
· Adult day care
· Assisted living facility
· Nursing homes
· Hospice
Many people believe that our healthcare system will help them pay for these services, but that is only true for a small amount of circumstances, for a limited amount of time, and will only apply to approved facilities and care. For instance, Medicaid/MediCal will only pay for LTC costs if the individual has under $2,000 in total assets.
As the **74 million baby boomer generation begins to create a larger demand for LTC it is only a matter of time before the demand for quality LTC facilities outweighs the supply. It is never too late to start planning for LTC costs, but the sooner you do the cheaper it will be for you and your loved ones.
*The statistics on this page were taken from the longtermcare.acl.gov
**Generational information provided by pewresearch.org