Currently, New Jersey spends $1.68 billion of its Medicaid long-term care budget on nursing home care, compared with $162 million on community-based care like assisted living facilities, home health care and adult day care. That means a lot of money will be going to skilled nursing facilities. The law will now help bridge the gap between money going to nursing homes versus money going to people in the community. “Rather than requiring that nursing homes be the first stop, now nursing homes will be the appropriate stop, if necessary,” said Dr. Fred Jacobs, state health commissioner for New Jersey.

Skilled nursing facilities are the right choice for many seniors who require this type of specialized care, however, seniors should never be placed in a nursing home simply because there are no other options. On a personal level, the law provides for appropriate changes in a person’s home including the installation of bathroom handrails and other safety features. Home health aides and respite care are now under the Medicaid umbrella of covered services. There are already so many choices to make regarding long-term care, and the passing of this law will give you better and smarter choices that will suit your needs! Most funding for adult day services comes from city government agencies, participant fees and charitable sources.

Download the Private-hire Home Caregiver Application to help you outline work experience, education and references along with much more. Employers can use this tool for assessing and comparing private-hire caregiver candidates.

What are My Options?

Nowadays, there are only a few carriers that offer a zero day elimination period. The most common choices are 30, 60, 90, 180 and 365 days, although these periods can vary from one carrier to another. The choice of 180 or 365 days is most often made by those who have significant assets of their own. Selecting a longer period helps them keep the cost of LTCI extremely low. Even if one chooses a 90-day elimination period, the amount of funds put at risk is miniscule when compared to the asset protection afforded by the policy’s total pool of benefits.

What is a Reasonable Choice for an Elimination Period?

Some popular financial authors recommend setting it as low as possible, perhaps even at zero. It’s true that the shorter the elimination period, the less likely it is that you will have to pay out when the time comes for you to begin receiving care. On the other hand, low elimination periods can have a dramatic effect on the premiums that you pay throughout the life of the policy. Usually some form of compromise is necessary for the sake of affordability. In making a decision about the elimination period, many policyholders keep in mind that insurance is often used as a way to avoid suffering catastrophic financial losses rather than insuring against every possible expense. Accepting a small portion of the risk involved can be an economical and reasonable choice for most people.

The Smartest Thing You Can Do

What’s right for most people, however, may not be right for you. In deciding on the best elimination period for your particular situation, it is important to check what the cost would be for the most expensive assisted care that you may have to receive, which is most of the time in facility care. Once you have a good idea of the daily costs for facility care in your area, then you multiply the costs by various elimination period choices and determine the amount that you feel is affordable. When you decide on the elimination period that best fits your situation, earmark those funds for your care, and allow them to grow so that they keeps pace with inflation, at the very least. Using a little financial common sense goes a long way toward making a wise decision about the LTCI elimination period.

First, the patient’s doctor must certify, in his or her best clinical judgment, that the patient is terminally ill with a life expectancy of six months or less. If the patient lives longer than six months, he or she can continue to receive hospice care just as long as the doctor re-certifies that the patient is under a terminal case and with declining health. The second key criterion is that the patient is willing to receive comfort care instead of curative treatments for their illness. For example, a patient could not be getting chemotherapy to cure their illness and be getting hospice care simultaneously. Hospice is intended be used once curative treatment is no longer an option. Finally, the patient needs to enroll in a Medicare-approved hospice program. This should be one of the first questions you ask in determining which hospice agency to use. More than 90% of hospices in the United States are certified by Medicare.

Congregate care is the same as to independent living. Residents of congregate care live independently, for the most part. This type of housing environment is usually offered at least one communal meal per day, and it’s common for services and activities to be offered to residents. Independent living, on the other hand, typically offers only living quarters and limited services.

Next, add on the options that you may be interested in one at a time and get a new quote. This will tell you exactly how much extra you can expect to pay for these options. Once you have those figures it’s much easier to decide if the options you are considering are really worth pursuing further. Here is a list of some of the most popular options in LTCI or Long Term Care insurance policies:

1. Return of Premium – This option allows you to receive back some or all of the premiums that you pay into the policy if you either decide to cancel the policy or if you die without using all of your benefits. {This is often a very expensive option~Be careful as this option is very expensive}.

2. Survivorship – For this option, the benefits differ from one carrier to another, but typically it says that if the policy premiums have been paid for a specified period of time, often ten years, and one spouse dies, the surviving spouse’s policy is considered as paid up with no other premiums required.

3. Restoration of Benefits – This provision restores all of the benefits paid out for care if a policyholder fully recovers and does not suffer a relapse for a specified period of time (usually six months).

4. Waiver of Home Health Care Elimination Period – This option reduces the elimination period (the amount of days that you pay for your own care before the insurance company starts to pay) to zero. This means that it starts to pay from the very first day of services rendered if the care is received at home. There are other options that can be considered when shopping for LTCI too, but in my own experience, the most common problem is getting bogged down in these extra features that do not really impact the quality of your future care nearly as much as the foundational features.

That’s why having a knowledgeable and experienced agent help you with the process can often reduce much of the confusion surrounding these options so that you can select the policy and features that suit you best.