... a continuation of Long Term Care Insurance Statistics.

Key Facts and Statistics about Long Term Care   

Types of Care

• Most Long Term Care received in a nursing home is custodial.
• Skilled care is a type of nursing care typically required by patients with uncontrolled, unstable or chronic conditions, or for patients recovering either from a medical condition that requires hospitalization or from surgery.
• Custodial care primarily involves assisting individuals with the activities of daily living (ADL's), which are eating, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, and maintaining continence. 

• In 2006, the national average daily rate for a private room in a nursing home providing custodial care was $206, according to a study conducted the same year.
• This same study also found that the 2006 average daily rate for a semi-private room in a nursing home providing custodial care was $183. 

Assisted Living Care

• Assisted living facilities are mainly for people who do not require the more intensive care provided by nursing homes but at the same time still require assistance in day-to-day living such as ADL's.
  
• Assisted living facilities provide residents with the management and monitoring of care and medication, assistance with ADL's, laundry and housekeeping services, security, transportation, and recreational activities.  These facilities have a more apartment community feel to them whereby residents have their own apartments containing their own furniture.  When residents need help, assistance is available.
• In 2006, the national average for a private pay monthly rate for care in an assisted living facility was $2,968.

Home Health Care & Community Care

• In 2006 the average hourly rate for a home health aide providing Long Term Care services was $19 per hour.
• The average hourly rate for a homemaker or companion in 2006 was $17 per hour.  These people typically help cook, clean, do laundry, shop, take out the trash, and make sure care recipients take their medications, etc.
• The national average cost for adult day care facility services in 2006 was $56 per day.

Americans' Overall Health

• Half of Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 have high blood pressure.
• Two out of five Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 are obese.  This statistic alone can be a huge predictor of the eventual need for Long Term Care. 
• The population age segment most likely to need Long Term Care services are individuals age 85 and older.  That segment is expected to grow by 307% in the next 45 years.  During the same period, the general population is expected to grow by only 42%.  People are simply living longer.

Government Programs

• Medicaid (the government welfare program) pays about 43% of overall Long Term Care costs.
• By the time most people qualify for Medicaid, they have spent their entire lifetime of savings.  In other words, a care recipient becomes eligible for Medicaid Long Term Care benefits only when he or she becomes impoverished after spending down their entire nest egg.
• Virtually all hospice care is paid for by Medicare.  Like most government services, the care is NOT going to be the quality found in private pay hospice situations.  Long Term Care Insurance can pay for hospice care.
  
• One payment source for home health care services is Medicare; but because of tight regulations, Medicare will only pay for Home Health Care if it is skilled care (nurses, for example), which makes up only about 5% of all home health care. 
  
• Custodial care, which makes up 90% of all home health care, is not covered by Medicare.  A Long Term Care Insurance policy will pay for custodial care in your own home.
  
• Medicaid pays for 46% of custodial care services provided in a nursing home, again because people did not plan for Long Term Care and ran out of money...thus ended up on Medicaid (Welfare)