cost of assisted living facility

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in this situation too - I was shocked at how little assistance there is available to the elderly. You basically get some assistance through Medicaid when you have only 6 months worth of finances left.

We ended up having to go the ER route to get into an assisted living facilty, which then provides 20 days of care maximum (through Medicare) for rehabilitation - it's really messed up, who came up with these ridiculous rules? Doesn't anyone care about the elderly?

Hospice is covered through Medicare once it gets to that point and when provided through the home, the primary caregiver can get 5 days of rest at a time when possible (you have to check all the boxes - we haven't done this but I have heard it's available)

I mentioned this on another thread as well, but I have an Employee Assistance Program through work - I don't know if this is common. They have been incredibly helpful in explaining how things work and figure out solutions. They are currently saving my sanity.

Medicaid allows for some money via the spouse but we had a limit of $2500 for my MIL. Going through the ER to rehab is the best way to get into a nursing home. We did it from home and it took about 6 months and it was terrible. Most, except one, of the nursing homes played games promising to take her and then kept blowing us off on when a bed would be ready.

[Anonymous]

Sunrise is $300/day, but I heard some directors can work with families to put two people in 1 place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sunrise is $300/day, but I heard some directors can work with families to put two people in 1 place.

You realize that is over $100,000 a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sunrise is $300/day, but I heard some directors can work with families to put two people in 1 place.

You realize that is over $100,000 a year.

There are a range of prices at most ALFs, and many offer shared rooms for a lower rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sunrise is $300/day, but I heard some directors can work with families to put two people in 1 place.

You realize that is over $100,000 a year.

There are a range of prices at most ALFs, and many offer shared rooms for a lower rate.

A shared room, even at $60,000 is more than many people can afford. My MIL's income was $1000 a month. Even with the low income programs, they expected us to subsidize at least $1000-2000 per month (and one was an HOC program).

[Anonymous]

My elderly cousin who has been paying out of pocket for round the clock at home care is about to run out of all of his assets. I am worried my parents are going to run through their own retirement assets supporting him, which means they will have none for themselves, which means I won't be able to support myself in old age, etc etc.

He gets about two thou a month in SS. He lives with his sister rent free. But he needs nursing care. Would he be eligible for Medicaid nursing home or home health aides?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My elderly cousin who has been paying out of pocket for round the clock at home care is about to run out of all of his assets. I am worried my parents are going to run through their own retirement assets supporting him, which means they will have none for themselves, which means I won't be able to support myself in old age, etc etc.

He gets about two thou a month in SS. He lives with his sister rent free. But he needs nursing care. Would he be eligible for Medicaid nursing home or home health aides?

Ps. He has no kids or spouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My elderly cousin who has been paying out of pocket for round the clock at home care is about to run out of all of his assets. I am worried my parents are going to run through their own retirement assets supporting him, which means they will have none for themselves, which means I won't be able to support myself in old age, etc etc.

He gets about two thou a month in SS. He lives with his sister rent free. But he needs nursing care. Would he be eligible for Medicaid nursing home or home health aides?

Yes, but understand that in less you go into a hospital first and go to rehab then a nursing home, you have to find a nursing home that will take medicaid pending. In six months and many hours, I only found one and I think that was pure luck. Call Adult Protective Services or whom ever deals with it. He may be eligible for an in-home aid or adult day care. I never figured out how to get it paid for though but I know its an option. We just got a run around.

[Anonymous]

Reading these posts makes me re-live the nightmare we had with my FIL. I've written about it before on other posts. In short, he had a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on one side, unable to toilet and some memory issues. From the hospital, he went to an ALF for rehab. I believe he was discharged after 3 months and returned to his home. My DH worked from home so he basically stayed with his dad during the day and an aide came to stay the night. It was awful. Given the choice of us divorcing or putting his dad back in an ALF, DH chose the ALF. As PP noted, it's hard to do from home so we waited until FIL had to go to the hospital and then moved him to an AFL from there.

After that, we met a financial planner with expertise in middle income clients and, importantly, well versed in elder care issues. She was a godsend and I wished we'd met her when this first happened. She had a lot of contacts and helped us to, once again, move FIL back home because it's a lot cheaper to get in-home care than it is nursing home care. But, you have to be willing to be more involved than at an ALF. For example, when there's a medical concern, the home aide will call you and you have to tell the aide what to do (do nothing, call 911, etc.). In an ALF, the staff will call you but you have assurances that 'someone' will take care of the issue if you're not available. There's a lot more peace of mind in an ALF - which you pay for.

The money issue is always hanging over you. With my FIL, he burned through all his liquid assets and there was only the house left. What do you do when you have no money to pay for care? Our stress level was huge. My DH spiraled into a depression, our marriage reached the breaking point and had no savings of our own because we had to pay for some of his care (which is one of many reasons our marriage was breaking - we have kids of our own, some with SN and had to halt therapies, etc.) And, I looked at FIL and thought what a shame it was that his quality of life was so poor. I'm getting OT here but it really brought home that just because we can prolong life, doesn't mean we should. If he'd been in his right mind, he would never have wanted things the way they were. I don't want to live that way and I don't want to put my loved ones through what we'd been through. I made sure I documented that and filed it with our trust/will documents. But, back to the story. My FIL died right before he was going to be moved back to an ALF. The plan was to get him to a hospital again and then move him to an ALF.

If you remember/read nothing else from my story, please remember to find a financial planner like we did to help you through this. I might be able to do it on my own now that I've been through it once but I wouldn't want to. If you can't find one, we used Amy Oviedo from Integrated Financial Partners (Amy dot Oviedo at IFPAdvisor dot com). She's located in Fairfax but if you live elsewhere, she can still likely help you or help you find someone. Hugs to everyone going through this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sunrise is $300/day, but I heard some directors can work with families to put two people in 1 place.

You realize that is over $100,000 a year.

The facility my parents are in is $6000 a month for one person, and an additional amount for the spouse. They also did a big buy-in of $400K or so. So $100K/year is not too surprising.

[Anonymous]

My in-laws are at a facility in Phoenix - one of the very best and there are a lot of assisted living facilities in Arizona. It's 10k a month per person so 240k a yr for the two of them. My FIL has Alzheimer's and needs round the clock care and MIL is in poor health - needs a walker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading these posts makes me re-live the nightmare we had with my FIL. I've written about it before on other posts. In short, he had a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on one side, unable to toilet and some memory issues. From the hospital, he went to an ALF for rehab. I believe he was discharged after 3 months and returned to his home. My DH worked from home so he basically stayed with his dad during the day and an aide came to stay the night. It was awful. Given the choice of us divorcing or putting his dad back in an ALF, DH chose the ALF. As PP noted, it's hard to do from home so we waited until FIL had to go to the hospital and then moved him to an AFL from there.

After that, we met a financial planner with expertise in middle income clients and, importantly, well versed in elder care issues. She was a godsend and I wished we'd met her when this first happened. She had a lot of contacts and helped us to, once again, move FIL back home because it's a lot cheaper to get in-home care than it is nursing home care. But, you have to be willing to be more involved than at an ALF. For example, when there's a medical concern, the home aide will call you and you have to tell the aide what to do (do nothing, call 911, etc.). In an ALF, the staff will call you but you have assurances that 'someone' will take care of the issue if you're not available. There's a lot more peace of mind in an ALF - which you pay for.

The money issue is always hanging over you. With my FIL, he burned through all his liquid assets and there was only the house left. What do you do when you have no money to pay for care? Our stress level was huge. My DH spiraled into a depression, our marriage reached the breaking point and had no savings of our own because we had to pay for some of his care (which is one of many reasons our marriage was breaking - we have kids of our own, some with SN and had to halt therapies, etc.) And, I looked at FIL and thought what a shame it was that his quality of life was so poor. I'm getting OT here but it really brought home that just because we can prolong life, doesn't mean we should. If he'd been in his right mind, he would never have wanted things the way they were. I don't want to live that way and I don't want to put my loved ones through what we'd been through. I made sure I documented that and filed it with our trust/will documents. But, back to the story. My FIL died right before he was going to be moved back to an ALF. The plan was to get him to a hospital again and then move him to an ALF.

If you remember/read nothing else from my story, please remember to find a financial planner like we did to help you through this. I might be able to do it on my own now that I've been through it once but I wouldn't want to. If you can't find one, we used Amy Oviedo from Integrated Financial Partners (Amy dot Oviedo at IFPAdvisor dot com). She's located in Fairfax but if you live elsewhere, she can still likely help you or help you find someone. Hugs to everyone going through this.

Once the resources are gone, you go into a nursing home under medicaid. You don't need a financial planner. We simply refused to pay for care for my MIL. The nursing homes tried very hard to get us to commit to private pay. We then got APS involved to get her in. We have a child in a lot of therapy too. No way I was stopping that to pay for a nursing home. I slowed it down to temp. care for my MIL but I was not being financially responsible.

[Anonymous]

Gerontological social workers- they can help lots of y'all. They know all the options and requirements.

[Anonymous]

2:07, did your MIL go from her own home to a nursing home or from an ALF? I posted earlier about my MIL falling a few times. How did you get APS involved? My MIL owns her own home and has been living alone independently for years, but she has been declining somewhat quickly and has now taken a few falls. No one seems to think this is a problem but me. She is going to be getting some OT, but no one is making any plans or having any discussions about her care moving forward. I think we need to either talk with her about selling her house and moving into an ALF. She has no savings and her monthly fixed income isn't enough to pay for care anywhere so she would have to sell her house in order to be able to self pay for as long as that lasts. An earlier poster responded to me and said her only option is a NH, but I have spoken to 2 ALFs now that would take her providing she makes it through the waiting list. However, I seem to be the only one worried about her so maybe I should just stow it. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

My MIL did not have a house or any money, so it was a non-issue for us. You will probably need to sell the house and use that money for ASL or a nursing home and then could get medicaid once that money is gone. Medicaid only pays for a nursing home, not assisted living. We just went through this and had to put my MIL in a nursing home when she probably would have been fine in ASL. It took me about six months. We had to move her here, establish residency (not a big deal - get benefits, apply for the medicaid waiver, get a bank account, transfer her address and get her an id). Then I had to call many many nursing homes and get her on the wait lists. Very few take the medicaid and if they do you are the last priority. I had many outright refuse, several pretended to put us on a list and I finally got lucky with APS intervening and they helped us get into a nursing home. I had to call APS many times demanding help and telling them that my MIL was homeless and could not stay with us long-term. Most of the APS folks were not helpful but I got lucky with one who gave me enough guidance to get me to where I needed to be. They claimed they had in-home help but when I asked for support they refused saying the focus was on a nursing home. They said there was payment help for an adult day care but no one could tell me how to do it and the day care didn't follow through so we had to stop. We got a therapist through a free county program and she bailed within a few weeks due to the dementia. Start now, get on the medicaid waiver (5 year list and do not need to show current need) and look into lower income programs. There are several in the area but most are $2500+. I would not rely on an ALF saying they will take her until they officially offer you a bed. We had one nursing home tell us for months they'd take her and even six months later no bed. We're still waiting as we never told them we got another bed. The best way to do it is through a hospitalization. It is very difficult to do a direct placement from home. We had no reason to hospitalize but every nursing home and professional told us that was the main way as medicare will pay for rehab for a few weeks.