Long Term Care insurance

[question everything]

It is time to renew the policy, send a lot of money and I am hesitating.

Several years ago I purchase one to protect my spouse if I will need long term care. But now, with so many stories of abuse in nursing homes by, in some cases teen age girls, with stories about minimum care - a bath once a week? - I am starting to think that I'd rather take a "final exit" than linger for years in a nursing home.

My mother suffered from Alzheimer's and her last yeas she was just there. Mostly asleep, or, at least, lying with eyes closed. What kind of a life is it? If I am no longer the person that family and friend know, why bother to keep the shell? And, yes, costs?

Any thoughts?

[Lebam in LA]

1. Make sure your policy has Home Health Care coverage

[Traveling_Home]

2. "OUR HOMES, NOT NURSING HOMES"

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[Lebam in LA]

7. Exactly

There are some good companies out there that have good Home Health Care coverage and the waiting period is usually shorter for benefits to begin

[question everything]

3. I think that it does. Will double check. Thanks (nt)

[SoCalNative]

4. Consider it this way

if you don't have a say in your decision as to whether or not you can live or die (and unless you live in Oregon you don't), do you really want to have to have your spouse spend all the money you might have saved on your care? Or face the thought of having to sell your home or take out a reverse mortgage? Pay for the insurance and as another poster suggested make sure that you have the home health care option on that policy.

[MADem]

5. You're on your own, I fear. It's a hard decision.

What if you get hit by a falling safe and you're a vegetable? No chance to take that final exit, in that case. Or you're hit by a crosstown bus and paralyzed from the earlobes down? Still with all your marbles, but can't scratch your nose never mind kill yourself? What will your family do then? And then, there's the whole issue of how your family would feel if you kill yourself--if they're the "What, we would have gladly wiped his ass every day!! We'd rather have had him with us than not!" crew, then you leave them feeling lousy and guilty forever. Would they help you do a Kevorkian, or not?

I don't know about you, but I had to put down an ancient family pet at the vet, it was no question/plainly needed, and I still feel like a murdering shithead. I don't think I could kill a relative, or help a relative kill themselves. I know people get desperate, and I'm not judging, but I think it would be a brainscrambling decision.

End of the day, though, you've gotta weigh all that in your own head and circumstances.

Good luck coming to a decision.

[YewNork]

6. Try to think logically not emotionally

I know it's hard, but sit and think what would your wife do if, for example, you were to suffer a stroke today
and need long term care. Would she be able to take care of you and does she have enough assets to do it?

[question everything]

8. Yes, hard

The bottom line, as others have pointed out, is to make sure that the policy also covers home care.

Also, for a relative to make sure that care is given with dignity.

My dad was no longer driving when my mom was finally sent to a home when her Alzheimer's deteriorated that he no longer could care for her himself, and he would take three buses, I think, to visit her every day, but he said that him being there was to assure that she was treated well, at least when he was there, was clean and bathed and fed.

I have a friend with a skin condition, constantly itching, constantly being treated with lotions and prescriptions, diagnosis varies from eczema to fungus or simply dry skin and perhaps even stress. And when he heard about some homes bathing patient only once a week - unless paid extra - he said that he would be dead..