Long-Term Care Insurance and Home Health Care San Antonio

LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE AND HOME HEALTH CARE IN SAN ANTONIO

Long-term Care Insurance can be a safety net to help individuals stay at home in San Antonio and to safe guard assets. When you purchase long term care you can choose coverage for a nursing home and/or a home health care policy.

Considerations in choosing a long-term care policy for home health care or nursing home

• Choosing an elimination period
The elimination period is the actual number of days of care that you have to receive before the policy will start paying. The premium of the policy is higher with less elimination days. A consideration is how much are you willing to pay out of pocket for home health care versus the monthly amount you are willing to pay for the premium.
• Selecting a home care policy with a daily, weekly or monthly maximum amount the policy will pay for care.
The advantage to having a weekly or monthly maximum versus a daily maximum is that if you have more hours of care on one day than another the policy may pay more in total for the same number of hours in a week or a month. This is important when the care is provided at home and care may be more sporadic.
• Selecting amount of coverage daily, weekly or monthly and inflation rider.
The amount selected may be less for a younger person if an inflation rider is included. An annual inflation rider is either simple or compounded. An inflation rider increases the daily amount, usually by 5% or 7%. This is an important consideration as the cost of care continues to rise.
All long term care policies require the individual to need at least 2 activities of daily living whether receiving care at home or in a facility.

These include:
“Bathing” – Washing oneself by sponge bath; or in either a tub or a shower, including getting into or out of the tub or shower.
“Continence” – the ability to maintain control of bowel and bladder function; or, when unable to maintain control of bowel or bladder function, the ability to perform associated personal hygiene (including caring for a catheter or colostomy bag).
“Dressing” – putting on and taking off all items of clothing and any necessary braces, fasteners or artificial limbs.
“Eating” – feeding oneself by getting food into the body from a table, a plate, cup or other receptacle or by a feeding tube or intravenously.
“Toileting” – getting to and from the toilet, getting on and off the toilet, and performing associated personal hygiene.
“Transferring” – sufficient mobility to move into or out of a bed, chair or wheelchair or to move from place to place, either via walking, a wheelchair or other means.