When it’s time to find an elder care facility for your family member, research is key. You have to know what to look for. You also have to understand how to pay. How much elder care will cost and why.
Here are some of the major issues to think about when discussing money for nursing home care.
Long-Term Care Insurance
The bottom line is that if you have long-term care insurance, you’re covered. If not, you really have to look at Medicare and Medicaid rules. You may have a lot of questions or you may not know how you’re going to pay for care.
Because long-term care insurance fixes most of those problems, it’s popular. Many elder care facilities will promote long-term care insurance plans. Some of them offer them to residents who are still healthy. The idea is that you go in healthy with the insurance. If you need care later, the insurance pays.
You have to look at the provisions of the long-term care insurance policy. However, if it’s written properly, it will probably get you or your family member a lot of the care that you need.
Medicare Rules
Medicare Part A will cover some kinds of skilled nursing facility care.
One of the keys is the timeline. It depends how the resident got to the home, and how he or she leaves. Medicare Part A provisions may be subject to time limitations, for instance, a financial cutoff 60 days after admission.
You may be getting Medicare Part A coverage, but the day that it runs out, you start to rack up huge bills. So it’s important to really look at Medicare Part A and timelines when discussing finances for elder care.
Discharge Plans
In some cases, the cost of elder care depends on when and how the patient is discharged. Will mom or dad leave the nursing home on a given day? What day did they arrive?
One of the things to discuss with the nursing home from day one is the discharge policy. Some families end up consulting elder care lawyers because they feel someone was discharged wrongly. An up-front conversation can help, but problems can still develop. Be aware of your rights in terms of discharge, and how it will affect financial decisions.
Medicaid Rules
Like Medicare, Medicaid may pay some costs of skilled nursing elder care. One of the big issues is assets.
Generally, Medicaid won’t pay unless the resident has limited assets. So you may have to do is spend down and exhaust assets before Medicaid payments will kick in. This is where nursing home care can get extremely expensive. If you’re paying out of pocket, it will be thousands of dollars a week, and many thousands of dollars a year.
These are details to consider when choosing an elder care facility. Talk to the law office of Steve Watrel if you have concerns about how your loved one has been treated, or have financial issues with a nursing home administration. Get help from a top nursing home abuse lawyer in Jacksonville Florida and get access to your legal rights.