If you are like most people, you do not want to be a burden to your loved ones as you age. As people are now living longer than ever before, many are living until their children approach retirement age. The last thing any parent wants to do is to burden their own children with their care.
You and your spouse have a 70 percent chance that one of you will need long term care at least once in your lifetime. If you do not have a spouse, you have a 40 percent chance of developing some condition that will require you to have long term care. This can happen at any time in your life – do you really want it to eat away all of your savings?
Some reasons for getting long term care insurance are as follows:
It will pay benefits that your insurance or Medicare will not. After getting out of the hospital, you may end up at a rehabilitation facility for a few months. While your insurance will cover some of these costs, they will not cover all of the costs. What they do not cover you will end up paying out of pocket. This can take away most, if not all, of your savings. When you have long term care insurance, you can rely on this to pick up what your insurance company will not cover.
It will enable you quality care. If you are forced to go into assisted living because of an illness or disability, you will have to pay for any care out of your savings. Medicare will only cover a small portion of the care that you receive. The rest will have to come out of your own pocket. Once your savings are depleted, you will have to apply for public aid. This may require you to be transferred to an assisted care facility that does not offer the quality as those that are privately funded.
It will ease the burden on your children. Your children will not want to see you in a facility where they feel you are not well cared for and may try to take care of you themselves. This will be a burden on them, whether or not they admit it. As parents, we never want to do anything to harm our children, even in our old age. We do not want them burdened with our care. If we have long term care insurance, we do not have to worry about being a burden to our children. We can stay in comfort at a long term care facility that is close to their homes.
Long term care insurance can provide for you whenever you need long term care. You can choose from a variety of different plans and the cost will be determined by your age and general health. Long term care can insure that you get the best care, that you do not burden your children and that you do not have to use all of your hard earned savings paying for long term care.