COLUMBUS: Policies are rising in price, while benefits are getting skimpier.
For aging baby boomers, planning for long-term care costs becomes more pressing every day. But the insurance that helps to cover these costs is surging in price, while the benefits are significantly decreasing.
As prices rise, health care experts are engaging in a fierce debate about whether the coverage is worth the years of premiums. Even when people do go into a rest home, those bills may not be as enormous as many people believe. Half of men and nearly 40 per cent of women who enter rest homes never have a stay exceeding three months, according to a recent study.
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4. Although some patients with dementia could spend many years in a nursing home, they tend to be the exception. The Center for Retirement Research found that men who need nursing-home care will spend less than 11 months in care, on average, while women will spend about 17 months. Such figures, combined with the rising cost of insurance, could point many middle-income consumers in one direction: to buy a scaled-back policy that would pay enough benefits to cover a short stay in a facility or a few hours of home care a day.