Long Term Care

A Insurance Article Contributed by Shobha Cutting

What is long Term Care

Long term care is the medical, social and personal support needed to by people to carry on the functions of living over extended periods of time. Such support may be needed by people who's ability to perform basic functions of life has been depleted due to an accident, disease/medical condition or old age. Medical conditions such as a stroke may have disabled the individual.

They may need support to move about and/or perform other basic functions such as bathe, dress, eat, use a toilet, shop, do household cleaning, laundry and similar everyday activities. Such support may be provided in an institution such as a nursing home or in the home of the individual, depending on the type of care needed. Wherever possible, disabled people in need of long term care prefer to be provided such care at home.

Where specialized and/or constant care or supervision or specialized medication is called for it is better performed in a facility. Also, long term care may be provided by informal caregivers such as family and friends or by medical/paramedical personnel or by both.

Facts about long Term Care

Long term care administered at home is more sought after than that provided by nursing homes. Unless absolutely necessary, people prefer to receive assistance at home. This is demonstrated by the fact that 78% of the long term care is being provided at the homes of patients. 25% of the American households (22.4 million families) are directly or indirectly associated with the provision of long term care. About 64% of such caregivers also hold full time jobs.

Old age is not the only cause to provide long term care, as one may have imagined. Of the total recipients of long term care, 43% are younger than 65. Of those over the age of 65, the likelihood of spending more than 2½ years in a nursing home is 41%. Probably 6 out of every 10 people will require both home care and nursing home care.

The requirements of long term care are also changing. Advances in medical science have advanced life expectancy. This has increased the percentage of people over 65 in our population while the number of younger people is not growing, their percentage actually dropping. Quite simply, we are adding to the population of people needing long term care and, at the same time, reducing the number of people available to provide such care.

More of the traditional caregivers (women) are in the workforce now and therefore the availability of the informal caregiver is reducing. Such reduction in the availability of traditional caregivers makes people spend out of pocket and engage paid professionals to receive the care they need.

Further, long term care provided by the Govt. is diminishing. Medicare today spends less on long term care. Legislation has been enacted to exclude care beyond 60 days from the realm of Medicare. The drain on resources of Medicaid programs, since these programs presently provide long term care, is expected to increase substantially over the next 20 years. The Govt. have displayed their unwillingness to sponsor long term entitlement programs.

The Crisis in long Term Care

The potential crisis in the future of long term care is therefore inevitable. The government appears to be unwilling to provide long term care entitlement on the same terms as the Social Security or Medicare. The distinction government policies place between Medicare entitlement and long term care entitlement is apparently unjustified. Whatever happened to the commitment to provide affordable health for all, which was the dream of the founding fathers of democratic America?