What is Long Term Care and what is it not?

It is not health insurance. Medicare, the federal program for retirees is health insurance and does not cover any long-term Care coverage at all. Medicaid, which is run by the state and subsidized by the federal government is the program that helps the indigent who need help covering their expenses associated with Long Term Care. And they have very special rules to qualify. For example, there's something called the spend down rule, which says you have to spend down your money until you have basically $2,000 left to your name and your primary home, and a couple of other things before they're going to actually help you. 

One of the concepts that transcends both the government rules, as well as the industry rules is a concept called activities of daily living or ADL's. Activities of daily living are a way to measure the ability of person to perform daily functions.

There are six activities of daily living. If you cannot perform two out of six activities of daily living, you qualify, maybe not financially, but physically you qualify for Long Term Care if you have an insurance plan; or you might qualify for Medicaid if you meet the financial requirements as well. 

So, with activities of daily living, if you meet the requirement and you have a long-term care insurance policy of some sort, then you're most likely going to be able to receive benefits pending any waiting periods or restrictions. The same with Medicaid. 

So that's the kind of nuts and bolts of long-term care. Don't think that Medicare is going to help because it does not. If you don't have your own insurance and you don't want to go on Medicaid, then you need to make sure you're saving enough money to be able to cover the potential costs associated with long term care.

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