Long-Term Care
A gap Medicare doesn’t cover — worth weighing while you’re young.
Long-term care (nursing home, assisted living, in-home care) isn’t covered by Medicare or most health insurance. Honestly, it’s mainly worth looking into while you’re under about 50 — when premiums are still affordable and you can qualify medically. After that, the math often stops making sense.
Long-term care insurance is real protection against a real cost — but it’s priced for your health and age on the day you buy it. For most people the economics only work while they’re under about 50. If you’re past that, I’ll usually point you toward other ways to plan rather than sell you a policy that doesn’t pencil out.
Why it matters
- Most of us will need it. Roughly 7 in 10 people who reach 65 will need some form of long-term care during their lives.
- Medicare won’t pay for it. Medicare doesn’t cover extended custodial care, and Medicaid only steps in after you’ve spent down your savings — placing you in the facility it chooses, not the one you’d pick.
- In Ohio it’s expensive. A semi-private nursing-home room runs roughly $100,000 a year, and a private room about $114,000.
How I help
We’ll talk honestly about whether a policy makes sense for your age and situation — and if it doesn’t, I’ll say so. A private policy can let you choose where you receive care and protect your retirement savings, but only when the timing and price are right for you.
Go deeper
The full picture — the statistics, what a private policy actually does, and how it protects your savings — lives in the Answer Library: Long-Term Care.