Long-Term Health Care Choices

If you or a dependent relative who needs or may need long-term health care in a nursing home or similar facility, you probably have fouir main alternatives to deal with the problem:

    1.  Fund the long-term care with your own assets;

    2.  Qualify the dependent for Medicaid;

    3   Establish a special needs trust for the dependent under a will or living trust; or

    4.  Make arrangement to fund the cost through a long-term health care insurance policy.

Funding the care with your own assets is a very costly choice.  For example, nursing home care on Long Island, New York averages more than $6,000 per month.  At that rate, a lifetime of savings can be exhausted in just a few years.  

Qualifying for Medicaid so that a disabled person could get government assistance to pay for long-term health care is a daunting task.  It requires the impoverishing of the dependent and an intrusive Medicaid application. Yet, so often this is the only way to care for a dependent's long-term health care needs.

A Special Needs Trust deals in a constructive way with the needs of  a disabled family member while keeping his or her eligibility for Medicaid and other government benefits.  See our discussion of Special Needs Trusts .

Long-term health care insurance can be employed in coordination with Medicaid planning and Special Needs Trusts to provide a seamless transition of funding for the care a dependent may need in the future.  

 

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Copyright © 2007 STEPHEN C. SILVERBERG, PLLC  All rights reserved.
Last modified: December 27, 2007

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