If you don't have the money to pay for long term care, Medicaid currently does, but it will take your house and everything you own by the end of it; this drain is a huge problem with a middle class, like actual middle class, estate and generational planning
Kamala Harris will propose a major new initiative today: expanding Medicare to cover the cost of long-term care at home
Harris will pitch the initiative as a way to help "sandwich generation" families and propose paying for it mostly with savings from Medicare drug negotiations.
This is freaking huge for the middle class. We spent 1700 on my mom in 6 days for 24-hour care so she wouldn't die in a nursing home. We had hoped we had months with her but didn't. The two nights she spent in a nursing home gave her sepsis and almost killed her then.
My father spent the last 4 months of his life in a facility before dying of lewy body at 70. The only reason my step mother isnt living in the foyer at her church is because she took out a LTC insurance policy that kicked in 6 months before my father died. It was still a very close thing.
same in the UK; my mother needed residential care and we found a great place specialising in dementia care at the second/third try and used her savings to pay while getting ready to sell her house because council funds are only available after you spend down to a certain level
My grandmother gave every asset away that she could to her grandkids in anticipation of entering a nursing home. Pretty sure this is a standard approach among middle class elderly.
This is a great policy idea.
The arbitrary costs of home care are a killer, too. When I was caring for my mother at her old home, sometimes we didn't have enough money for her to eat. And she would cry and cry.
This is an incredibly tricky problem, because the cost of long-term care is truly enormous, and people probably ought to be expected to plan and contribute toward their own care. The contrast with early-years care is instructive. The federal government basically doesn't subsidize that at all.
It's weird to see folks talking about this like middle class homeowners would be robbing taxpayers if they don't give up their homes and zero out assets to go on Medicaid, but no one's talking about how long-term care has become ground zero for wealth transfer from the middle class to ultra-wealthy.
This would be huge for letting a family retain a home, often a primary asset, in the event that a family member can't take care of themselves any longer, which is again huge for those families that can't actually afford LTC (most families, in other words)
My mom & uncle are currently selling my grandmother's house under just these circumstances. They all it, but she can't live alone & assisted living is expensive. They HAVE TO take the highest offer, which means it'll go to a flipper or slumlord instead of a family who needs a home.