In a recent report released by the Alzheimer’s Association estimates that Alzheimer’s disease and dementia triple the health-care costs for those seniors.The people who live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities pay an average of $17,000 in out-of-pocket costs each year, researchers found. The association also estimates that nearly 10 million unpaid caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease spent 8.5 billion hours in 2008 watching over their loved ones, care valued at an estimated $94 billion.

About 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, according to the association’s Facts and Figures report for 2009. The number includes about 14 percent of people aged 71 and older.

The report finds that:

The average annual health-care cost for someone older than 65 with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia was $33,007 in 2004 — three times more than the $10,603 for people that age without the conditions.
Deaths from Alzheimer’s disease rose by 47 percent from 2000 to 2006 while the number of deaths from several other major diseases — including heart attack, stroke, breast cancer and prostate cancer — fell during that period.
States in the Rocky Mountains and Northwest will see the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease increase by at least 81 percent between 2000 and 2025.
By 2025, California and Florida will each be home to more than a half-million people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Startling Stats! You can visit www.alz.org to read the entire article.

Good new for those looking into a Reverse Mortgage! The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 signed into law on February 17, 2009, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that officially raised the national limit for Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (”HECM” or “Reverse Mortgage”) from $417,000 to $625,500 for the balance of 2009. This new lending limit may allow access to more funds from a Reverse Mortgage than previously allowed, especially for homes worth more than $417,000. With a Reverse Mortgage you may get be eligible to receive funds from $77,000 to $190,000!

Sunrise Senior Living now offers a new informational guide to help seniors and their families identify ideas for affording senior care in today’s challenging economy. The guide, called Affording Senior Living: The Financial Options, is available at Sunrise communities nationwide and also online at www.sunriseseniorliving.com/financialoptions .
The Affording Senior Living Guide gives tips for families and helps to identify a variety of financial products that are available in the marketplace today to help families who need access to senior care, but are unsure how they will pay for it.
Affording Senior Living: The Financial Options incldues information about the following:

Traditional options such as investments, savings and income
Real estate options such as home equity loans and reverse mortgages
Insurance options such as long term care insurance and life settlements
Government options such as Veterans’ Benefits and Medicare

ccording to a new Government Accountability Office report  the economic stimulus package Congress would boost each state’s federal medical assistance percentage  by 7.6% from the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 through the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2011.

The Medicaid funding would total nearly $87 billion over the period, the report said. State allocations would range from less than $100 million to more than $12 billion.Besides raising each state’s FMAP, the bill would provide additional FMAP assistance based on increased unemployment. It would create three tiers based on state unemployment rates, each of which would correspond to an additional FMAP increase.

To see the report, go to http://www.gao.gov

According to a new U.S. Census Bureau report, Nursing homes and residential care facilities continued to receive most of their funding from Medicaid in 2007. The entitlement program handed out $59 billion to them.

Medicaid provided at least $20 billion to continuing care retirement communities in 2007, which was up 10.1% from 2006. Homes for the elderly that do not have on-site nursing care facilities also saw a revenue increase of 7.1% up to $14.5 billion, according to the Census Bureau figures. Overall healthcare and social assistance revenue increased by 6.8% to $1.66 trillion in 2007.

While overall revenues were up, emergency relief services saw a 13.2% cut, dropping the amount of funding received to $6.9 billion. Figures were compiled from the results of the 2007 Service Annual Survey: Health Care and Social Assistance, which estimates revenues for healthcare providers and related businesses with paid employees.

Source: US Census Report

I recently read an interesting article about PACE. Here is more information about the program.

PACE is an All-inclusive Care Program for the Elderly . The model is centered around the belief that it is better for the well-being of seniors with chronic care needs and their families to be served in the community whenever possible.

According to the National PACE Association, there are 16,000 participants in PACE nationwide. The average client is 80 and takes eight prescription medications. Participants have to be 55 or older, certified by their state to need nursing home care and be able to live safely in the community.

Each PACE program receives a fixed amount per person from a patient’s state Medicaid program — usually 85% to 90% of estimated nursing home costs. Medicare funds come through a risk-adjusted formula in which the program receives more for sicker enrollees. PACE becomes both the patient’s insurer and care provider and is obliged to pay for all of the patient’s medical care from the point of enrollment forward.

Services include:

Delivering all needed medical and supportive services, the program is able to provide the entire continuum of care and services to seniors with chronic care needs while maintaining their independence in their homes for as long as possible. 

Care and services include:

• Adult day care that offers nursing; physical, occupational and recreational therapies; meals; nutritional counseling; social work and personal care
• Medical care provided by a PACE physician familiar with the history, needs and preferences of each participant
• Home health care and personal care
• All necessary prescription drugs
• Social services
• Medical specialists such as audiology, dentistry, optometry, podiatry, and speech therapy
• Respite care
• Hospital and nursing home care when necessary

The benefits of PACE are that participants are supported by a coordinated medical team that the federal government hopes will cut costs and improve life for the elderly.

As the leader in the group long term care market, Unum provides an annual review of sales and claims trends each fall in recognition of Long Term Care Awareness Month in November.

“We carefully track these trends so we understand the needs of our customers,” said John Noble, director of long term care products for Unum. “More people expect to be able to receive care at home, and making that possible is an important element of long term care coverage.”

Of Unum’s inforce policies, 93.4 percent are purchased to cover some type of home care. And nearly 70 percent of Unum’s group customers use their long term care benefits for care that occurs in the home.

Unum holds 76 percent of the group long term care market and has ranked No. 1 in the industry in terms of inforce cases and insured individuals for the past three years. In 2007, Unum covered 653,038 people under its long term care policies.
Further analysis of the group long term care sales data reveals:

– Women represent the majority (52 percent) of the purchasing population.
– The average age of a purchaser of a group long term policy is 43.5.
– Unum experienced a 37-percent increase in new long term care cases sold in 2007 compared to 2005.
– The top five industries purchasing group long term care insurance are law firms, physicians, insurance brokerages, management consulting services and engineering firms.
– The top five states purchasing long term care insurance are California, Florida, Ohio, Texas and Georgia.

Unum revealed in last year’s Landscape of Long Term Care a dramatic increase in employer-funded policies. The trend continued into 2007, with 90 percent of new group long term care cases being employer-funded.

This year, Unum reveals insight into those businesses. More than 53 percent of employers offering long term care coverage have 250 employees or fewer. More than 36 percent of those employers have fewer than 100 employees.

“We continue to see the smaller to mid-level employers willing to offer long term care coverage to their employees and also fund some of the cost,” said Noble. Unless referenced otherwise, the statistics included in this news release are based on Unum internal data as of 2007.

The average daily cost of a private room in a nursing home in the United States stayed essentially the same as last year, according to the 2008 MetLife Market Survey of Nursing Home & Assisted Living Costs. The average rate for a private room is $77,380 a year, or $212 a day, an increase of one dollar from last year. Meanwhile, assisted living costs increased 2.1 percent from an average of $2,969 monthly or $35,628 annually in 2007, to $3,031 monthly or $36,372 annually in 2008.

The survey also reports on the cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home, which increased 1.1 percent to $191 a day, or $69,715 a year, a 3 percent increase over last year.

Once again, the highest rates for a private nursing home room in 2008 were found in Alaska, where the cost is $577 a day on average. The lowest rates were found in the non-metropolitan and non-suburban areas of Louisiana, at $127 a day. The cost of assisted living was the highest in southern Maine at $4,708 per month and the lowest in North Dakota at $1,980 per month.

Alot of people contact me qith questions regarding senior living costs, more specifically assisted living costs.Here’s a partial list of average monthly assisted living costs around the country according to the MetLife study:

Statewide, AK - $3,757	Des Moines, IA $2,139
Birmingham, AL $2,441	Boise, ID $2,317
Little Rock, AR $2,011	Peoria, IL $2,008
Tucson, AZ $2,057	Fort Wayne, IN $2,638
San Diego, CA $2,103	Wichita, KS $2,347
San Francisco, CA $2,630	Louisville, KY $2,438
Denver, CO $2,056	New Orleans, LA $2,418
Stamford, CT $4,327	Boston, MA $3,424
Washington, DC $3,920	Silver Spring, MD $3,718
Wilmington, DE $3,782	Billings, MT $2,339
Orlando, FL $2,000	Dallas/Fort Worth, TX $2,361
Atlanta, GA $2,535	Milwaukee, WI $2,798
Honolulu, HI $3,112

Long-term care costs have increased 5 to 13 percent in the past two years, according to the recently released 2008 Long-Term Care Cost of Care research report from Prudential Financial. But regardless of across-the-board cost upticks, the average daily cost for assisted living is still less than half the average daily cost for a private room in a nursing home, which helps fuel support for allowing seniors to age in place once they move into assisted living communities.

The Prudential study found that the average daily cost for assisted living is about $100, or $3,241 per month. The average daily cost for a nursing home private room is $217, or $79,205 annually. The study also reports that costs can vary significantly by geographic region.  The least expensive areas include Oklahoma City and St. Louis.