class act MEDICARE AND LONG TERM CARE

Here’s the blunt truth: Medicare generally won’t pay for as much nursing home or in-home care as many people think it will. Your cash savings may well be insufficient, especially if you want to leave plenty of money for a spouse who may outlive you. Your family may not be willing or able to take care of you. And if you do spend all of your assets to qualify for Medicaid, there’s no guarantee Medicaid will pay for the quality of care you want and do so close to friends or family.

So we better hope that the Class Act works and helps lots of Americans. Because if it doesn’t, plenty of people will be right back in denial-land again.

That said, there are some people who have already purchased long-term care insurance from a commercial company. Limra, a market research firm, figures there are about seven million of them.

Some buy it out of an abundance of caution, while others do it because their employers offer subsidized premiums as a benefit. Many others have seen family members spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on care or struggled to provide care themselves when there was no money left.