Do you have a loved one who you need to place in a nursing home or an assisted living facility?
For many people, placing a loved one in a nursing home is the best option for their well-being. However, figuring out how to pay for nursing home care can feel like a daunting task.
Nursing home care can cost thousands and thousands of dollars each year. So, if you’re not rich, how are you supposed to help a parent or another loved one pay for their care?
Read on to learn about the top three ways to pay for nursing home care.
1. Public Benefit Programs
If your parent is over the age of 65, they can use Medicare, which is a federal health insurance program.
Medicare will cover care in a nursing facility for up to 100 days, however, it won’t cover any longer than that. And Medicare only covers stays in skilled nursing facilities, which are specifically for patients who are recovering from a surgery or a hospitalization.
Therefore, if your parent needs to stay somewhere long-term, they will have to turn to other options.
The other public benefit program to look into for your parent is Medicaid. Not to be confused with Medicare, Medicaid is for low-income individuals. Medicaid eligibility requirements vary by state, and you will also need to make sure the facility you choose accepts patients with Medicaid.
So, Medicaid or Medicare? You can learn more about the differences here.
2. Private Insurance
Private insurance is another way you can pay for long-term care for a loved one.
While long-term insurance won’t cover all of your nursing home costs, they can help significantly reduce them. If you are looking into long-term care plans early, it is a good idea to encourage your parent to purchase long-term care insurance early on, so then they can use it when they really need it.
The other private insurance option is life insurance. If your parent has life insurance, they can cash it out early to help cover the costs of living in a nursing home.
However, your loved one will want to make sure that their life insurance policy can be applied to long-term care, as some policies do not allow you to do this.
Also, if your loved one’s life insurance plan happens to include a death benefit, then the policyholder can take out a portion of that and use it to help pay for their long-term care. If the policy does not have a death benefit included in it, there is still the option to choose a life settlement and then sell the policy to a third party.
3. Family Assets and Personal Assets
Last but not least, you’ll want to consider family or personal assets to help pay for your loved one’s nursing home care.
These may include stocks, personal savings, or property. Or you may choose to get a little more creative by taking out a reverse mortgage. A reverse mortgage involves exchanging the home equity you’ve built up over the years and exchanging it for cash.
In order to access the cash, you can either get it in a lump sum, receive a monthly payment, get a line of credit.
So, there you have it, the three different ways you can pay for nursing home care for a loved one. If you have any questions about these options, let us know in the comments below!
