Monterey, CA Long Term Care Insurance (LTC) May Be The Only Thing Enabling You To Remain In Your Own Home And Independent : Unfortunately, Few People Have It

View From A Nonprofit Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, Seaside And Soledad California

I was inspired to start an in home private duty caregiving service called Family inHome Caregiving several years ago after taking care of my grandmother for five years prior to her death two years ago.  I had many happy times and many sad times, as she went through the considerable ups and downs (both health wise and emotionally) that anyone fighting a long battle with dementia or Alzheimer's disease faces.  Although Family inHome Caregiving quickly became very successful, I soon realized that the county has both large pockets of very wealthy people and many even larger pockets of people that are extremely poor.  With all of the budget cuts at both the state and federal levels, we were inundated with calls from people who were in bad need of care to stay at home and remain independent, but simply couldn't afford it.  Many people believe that Medicare covers private duty in home care.  Unfortunately, my company and our Platinum Sponsor Alliance Home Health (which does something similar to Family inHome Caregiving but they focus on the medical aspect) know very well that it doesn't.  And even with home health, the number of hours of care which are reimbursable is very limited.  For private duty caregiving, Long Term Care Insurance (LTC) is the only type of private insurance which will cover some of the charges.  Unfortunately, it's extremely expensive and few people get it.   Explaining this situation to people is very challenging.  They simply do not understand why Medicare isn't there to care for them or a loved one when they are having physical difficulties. There have been rumblings that Medicare may eventually change its policy as health care reform gets rolled out and radical changes are made to our country's health care system.  I certainly hope so, but I wouldn't hold my breath given the poor financial condition of the Medicare and Social Security funds.  It was nice to read an article about a woman who turned a terrible situation into a good one.  It profiled Karen Thomas, whose mother qualified for Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) but didn’t receive it right away.  Rather, she was put on a waiting list.  This did little to help with the $1,000 a month that she was paying for a caregiver, and her daughter decided to change her career because she couldn't work 70 hours per week as CFO of a food company and care for her mother as well.  She started a non-profit and in the process signed up for a policy so that her employees could get LTC.  This makes it much more affordable when employers do this, and I am happy Ms. Thomas was able to find a new career in the non-profit sector while still taking good care of her employees.

Please note that this blog reflects my personal opinion and may or may not reflect the opinion of Hands to Help Seniors and the individual members comprising the Board of Governors.