They all prefer to “age in place”.  However, they are not making plans to guarantee that they will have that choice.

Taxpayers support Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance is supported by premiums so we all pay for Home Health Care, either directly or indirectly.  The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 caused severe cutbacks in the number and length of time allowed for Home Health Care visits.  Long-Term Care is the real health care crisis.  Since patients no longer convalesce in hospitals they are released from the hospital “quicker and sicker”.

Home Health Care today is paid for from private funds, very limited coverage under Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Benefits, the home and community based waiver program and senior centers.  Home Health Care can be very simple or very sophisticated and it is all covered by Long-Term Care insurance.  These policies can actually keep a person out of a nursing home when they need care.  Long-Term Care insurance will pay for all levels of Home Health Care including Skilled, Intermediate, and Basic, or Custodial in addition to Assisted Living and Nursing Home care.

Home Health Care includes a variety of services for occupational, physical, respiratory, and speech therapy or nursing care.  Also included are medical social workers, home health aides, and homemaker services as well as instrumental activities of daily living.

The Center of Long-Term Care “Bullets” released on December 19, 2003 tells us that Medicare and Medicaid won’t be much help with Home Health Care services in the future.  These hard facts about hard truths should help cut through consumer myopia and inertia about private pay long-Term Care protection.

An excerpt from Sue Shellenbarger’s “Work and Family” column in the December 11, 20003 Wallstreet Journal states that if you are among the 23 million people who provide Long-Term Care to an aged relative or loved one there’s a message for you from Washington buried in the 1,000 pages of the new Medicare Law.

“YOUR ON YOUR OWN.”

The measure, signed into law December 8, 2003 by President Bush, continues the Federal Government’s six-year retreat from funding in-home care for Medicare recipients, reducing expected funding increases for inflation to 2.5% from 3.3%.  Home Care programs, such as temporary nursing help, are especially important to family caregivers who often make sacrifices to keep aged relatives at home.

“A halving of Medicare Home Care funding since 1997 has slashed the number of patients receiving this help by more than one-third, to 2.2 million from 3.5 million.  “The shortages make help more expensive”, says Michael Heaney, a fellow ot the American Political Science Association, Washington D.C.

With the health care system hemorrhaging from governmental cutbacks, including those for Veterans, and increased cost of services we must assume personal responsibility for our own Home Health Care.  “PLAN FOR WHAT YOU WANT OR SETTLE FOR WHAT YOU GET.”