Aging in Place

[imoldernu]

This from Genworth might be helpful in estimating long term care costs in your location, including daily, monthly, and annual estimates of home health care:

https://www.genworth.com/about-us/industry-expertise/cost-of-care.html

You also have the ability to calculate estimated future costs of LTC in its many forms.

Excellent website. A wake up call, and quite accurate based on my own knowledge of costs in several locations in Illinois and Florida.

Another sobering fact... 1 in 3 seniors die with Alzheimer's or Dementia. While it is possible to keep provide home care, this can well have devastating results for the caregiver. While some patients become passive and pose no emotional problems, a very high percentage strain to maintain individuality, becoming difficult to handle, or worse... to become aggressive and dangerous.

Using the Genworth Chart, a private nursing home room, 20 years from now, could cost upwards ot $170K/yr. Unless there is a change in the government's trend toward reducing public healthcare funds, this could shift the burden of care to the "at home" model, similar to to the social structure of Japan, which has dealt with this for many years.

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Re Robots:

While I would agree there is much room for improvement in many areas, I can see little substitute for the personal emotional contact, and the physical necessities that do not lend themselves to mechanical care at present. I would suggest that two or three hours at a time, at a nursing home during visiting hours does not represent the full experience, and the breadth of the 24/7 care is far more than meets the eye. Even in the well staffed environment of the nursing home in our CCRC, the pressure of giving personal care reduces the availability of new hirees, where emotional and temperamental stability is becoming more difficult to find.

This also goes to the point of supply and demand. Those who have had to make a long and difficult search to find proper care for a loved one may attest to the wide differences between assisted living facilities and nursing homes.
Conscientious care is not just a matter of the facility, but of management of the physical and personal pieces that make up "caring". In the end, it usually comes down to the money needed to maintain standards.

 

[NW-Bound]

Figuring out how to do it is easier than figuring out how to pay for it...

Where there is a demand companies will supply that demand. It's the American way -

Except that the "greedy" providers may want too much for their service (like changing diapers). I would too.

 

[Options]

(I think ) I posted this before, but in case I hadn't, this is the best, most comprehensive planning guide I've been able to find regarding long-term care to include housing, financial, lifestyle, family, and health care considerations. Gives pro's and cons of each housing option and contains a wealth of information.

I have personally mapped out a general idea of how I want the three stages of retirement to go (euphemistically referred to as the go-go, slow-go, and no-go years). Things may not go according to plan, but to the extent that I am in a position to influence outcomes, at least I have a general idea (subject to revision based on updated circumstances and desires) what I'd like all of my retirement years to look like, up to and including end of life to the greatest extent possible.