Your Home or a Nursing Home?

It would probably be easy for me to throw a bunch of scary statistics at you about recovery times from certain illnesses, recuperation periods after a stay in the hospital, or the odds of needing some type of medical care or assistance once you turn a certain age. But in reality your risk of needing care is either 0% or 100% (you’ll need it at some point or you won’t).

If the need for care or assistance occurs would you rather be cared for in your own home or in a nursing home? An informal poll of the first ten people that I asked unanimously voted for home, not a nursing home. I bet you would too (I know I would). Have you ever known anyone who wanted to go into a nursing home for any reason?

The problem is that care, whether in your home or a nursing home isn’t free. So, if the need arises you only have a few choices:

·        Pay for it out of your savings or your income

·        Rely on the goodness of relatives or friends to provide care at no cost

·        Buy a full coverage long-term care policy that includes a home health care benefit

·        Give most of your assets to the state and move into a state approved nursing home, or

·        Transfer the risk to an insurance company that offers home health care policies

There was a time when stand-alone home health care policies were offered by quite a few insurance companies, but starting about 15 years ago nearly all of them were withdrawn from the market. Insurance companies saw greater profit potential in full blown long-term care insurance that included some home health care benefits so they stopped selling the popular home health care plans. However, long-term care insurance could cost a husband and wife $8,000 to $12,000 per year or more.

Today, however, in response to the drastically increased cost of nursing home insurance a few insurance companies have brought back reasonably priced home health care plans. By reasonably priced I mean that we have plans starting at under $30 per month. The plans are very flexible in their designs and not very complicated. You can design your plan so that it pays from $100 to $300 per day, for up to one year, directly to you, to use as you wish.

If remaining in your home when the time for care arises is important to you please contact us at (800) 955-0418, or by e-mail to info@h-ie.com. Thanks for reading.