Are There Alternatives to Medicaid to Pay for Nursing Home Care?
By Barry Zimmer on September 5th, 2017 in Medicaid
A Montgomery Medicaid planning attorney will help you to evaluate how important Medicaid planning is to you. Medicaid planning is important to most people because of the need to get Medicaid to pay for nursing home care. As many as 70 percent of people who reach the age of 65 will eventually end up needing nursing home care, according to the Wall Street Journal and they may not be able to afford this care for very long if it is not covered by a third-party payer.
Zimmer Law Firm will carefully review your financial circumstances and help you to explore all possible sources of payment for nursing home care. Based on this assessment of how you can get your care costs covered, we can advise you on whether you can and should create a Medicaid plan and we can help you to put your plans in place.
You should not wait until you actually need nursing home care to talk with a Montgomery Medicaid planning attorney, as you will need to take action before you need care in order to be eligible for several of the different options for getting care covered by a third-party payer.
Your Options for Paying for Nursing Home Care
Medicaid is one of the few third-party payers who will pay for nursing home care, and is thus one of the primary sources of payment for seniors in nursing homes.
Many people are surprised to discover that Medicare won’t pay for a nursing home, but Medicare only pays for skilled nursing services such as medical services that seniors and sick people cannot do themselves at home. And, even when Medicare does pay for these services, the circumstances for eligibility are narrow and the coverage lasts for a limited duration. With all the restrictions and coverage limitations, Medicare is not a viable option for getting routine nursing home costs covered.
Those who buy Medigap policies to expand their Medicaid coverage may believe that their Medigap policy will pay for nursing home care, but it won’t. Medicare Advantage policies also don’t cover nursing home. The kind of care most people who go into a nursing home need is called custodial care, which is the name given to the type of care people require when they cannot do routine activities of daily living like showering or bathing. Custodial care is not covered by private insurers or Medicare supplementary policies.
Since neither Medicare nor private insurance policies cover nursing home care costs, this means that those who are looking for a third-party payer will need to look to other sources. Long-term care insurance policies can provide coverage for nursing home care, but there are ample warnings about these policies suggesting that restrictions on coverage and limitations on benefits – like a low maximum daily rate the policy will pay – make these policies all-but-useless for many policyholders.
Further, the better policies which might provide more comprehensive coverage tend to become very expensive as seniors get older, and thus many people will eventually stop paying the premiums before they need to get their long term care insurer to pay for the costs of care.
With private insurance, Medicare, and long-term care policies not viable options, there really are few choices to get nursing home care bills paid. If you cannot qualify for Medicaid to pay for your care, then your only choice is typically to pay privately. If you have money, you will need to spend it on paying for your care. If you have certain kinds of assets that you own, you might have to sell them to pay for a nursing home.
Medicaid will cover the costs of care, but it has asset limits. This means that when you have spent your money and sold some of your property, Medicaid could begin to pay for the costs of your care. If you don’t want to wait until you’ve spent a fortune and lost your legacy, however, you should make a Medicaid plan so you can get Medicaid to pay for you if you end up needing to move to a nursing home.
Getting Help from a Montgomery Medicaid Planning Attorney
With few or no other viable alternatives to pay for nursing home care besides Medicaid, you cannot afford to be ineligible for Medicaid if you need care. Zimmer Law Firm will help you to get the care you require paid for, without having to first impoverish yourself and lose your legacy. Give us a call at 513.721.1513 to find out about options for getting care costs covered or join us for a free seminar to learn what a Montgomery Medicaid planning attorney can do to help you get covered.