“My dad’s dementia care costs $9,000 a month. I’m selling my parents’ home to pay for it.,” by Noah Sheidlower, Business Insider
Quote:
”Keith Alan Pavlick, 53, is moving his parents into assisted living, which will cost $9,000 monthly. Pavlick’s father has dementia, and Pavlick estimates memory care will cost $14,000 monthly. The caregiving and long-term care experience has taken up every second of Pavlick’s life.”
LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:
Everything about this sad story is commonplace, happens every day, except the outcome. Few people sell homes to fund LTC. Nor do they use reverse mortgages to pay for aging in place. That’s because Medicaid exempts the home and all contiguous property from asset spend down up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. On top of that Medicaid planners advise families to hold back a little cash to start paying privately for care to lock in access to the best LTC facilities and home care agencies that are desperate for private payers. Middle class and affluent people handle catastrophic LTC costs by passing on the liability to taxpayers. That’s why the whole system is on the cusp of collapse. To make sense of what ails LTC, read the Paragon Health Institute’s “Long-Term Care: The Problem” and “Long-Term Care: The Solution” and watch this “virtual LTC event” featuring age wave visionary Ken Dychtwald and leading LTC researchers. To find ample private funds for LTC, check out “Medicaid’s $100+ Billion Leak.” For what not to do, see “Medi-Cal-amity: California’s Reckless Expansion of Medicaid Long-Term Care to the Affluent.” Much more on long-term care here.