Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary has decades of experience in caregiving, which fuels her writing on the topic. She cared for a brother with severe epilepsy before he died at age 32, then for the grandparents who raised her, and then for her father-in-law, she told NPF America’s Long-Term Care Crisis fellows.
In “The Color of Money,” Singletary responds to readers’ difficult dilemmas. One reader from California wrote: “My dad had been in assisted living for two and a half years and for the last two years has needed round the clock care, the costs when my mother was alive total $230,000 a year. The cost of care from my dad is now $170,000 a year.”
“Who doesn’t want to live long, right? Well, what if the longevity means spending down your money for long-term care? And that’s if you’ve been prosperous and have the funds to pay a facility or home healthcare to care for you,” Singletary said.
She advised journalists to help their audiences navigate financing for long-term care. For instance, interviewing financial advisers about long-term care insurance (most say to get a policy by 50).
Far too many people still believe that Medicare will provide long-term care support—and it does not, Singletary said. And extended life spans coupled with more complex illnesses has dramatically reduced access to insurance. Companies simply had not planned on people living until well into their nineties.
“In fact, the federal government, their long-term policies, you can’t even get a new policy. They stopped it in 2022 because it was unsustainable. Now they have hybrid policies, and they have limits. Most of the policies, the top policy will pay out probably about $200,000 to $300,000 or five years, whichever comes first. And the thing about Alzheimer’s….is that you can live very long with Alzheimer’s. That 200 or 300,000 is gone in a couple of years. We need to talk about what is the alternative because it is not financially stable.”
SCAN Foundation President Sarita Mohanty said foundations need to make bold, deliberate investments in strategies to address gaps in equity and access for caregivers and patients.
“Our priority populations really are those of lower income, those at or below the 400% federal poverty limit …,the ones that don’t have really any kind of long-term care services available to them,” Mohanty said. “We also are really intersecting that with racial social justice, communities of color and also looking at rural populations as well.”
She said AARP’s 2023 Long-Term Services and Supports Scorecard helps the foundation focus. Access to home and community-based services is also a priority for SCAN. “We know that many rural states have large numbers of people with low-care needs living in nursing homes because home-based care is not available. Only 22% of nursing home residents live in a facility with a five-star rating.”
Financial support for family caregivers could be a huge help. “The average family caregiver, you may have heard, spends more than 7,000 a year, 7,000 a year with out-of-pocket costs. Yet only six states provide a tax credit for these expenses.”
Mohanty said her foundation wants to ensure financial stability for people to age in place. “Fifty-three percent of Medicaid spending on long-term care right now went to home and community-based services. That is up from 37% in 2009. And this is going to just continue to grow. And again, this is Medicaid. So what again about those lower middle income, older adults who don’t have Medicaid?”
Access the full transcript here.
The America’s Long-Term Care Crisis Fellowship is sponsored by AARP, which also sponsors the AARP Award for Excellence in Journalism on Aging, accepting applications until Oct. 16. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
