The Top Five Reasons Why You Should Know More About Long Term Care

Author: Duane Lipham, CLTC

There is major trouble heading for the American economy in the next few years in the field of health care, but not necessarily from the area that most people expect. Although there are serious problems with our health care system in general, the field of long term care has the potential to be the most damaging and troublesome of all. Here are the reasons why:

1. We are all just simply living longer these days. Initially, that sounds like a great thing, and it is in many ways. Modern medical science coupled with knowledge of how to better care for ourselves through diet and exercise have given us the gift of prolonged life. As a result, the fastest growing segment of the American population today is those over eighty years of age.

2. It is precisely because of these added years of life that many of us will need more care before we die. It means that fewer of us will be dying from sudden illness that killed our parents and grandparents. However, when you live longer your body wears out and we die slower, which means that we will need much more custodial care than did our parents and grandparents. Many people try to make an educated guess about their own lifespan and cause of death by looking back at what has happened to members of their family in the past. Unfortunately, this generation cannot use that measuring stick as an accurate prediction of their own need for health care because what was true about aging 25 - 50 years ago is simply not applicable to us today.

3. The baby "boomer generation" will soon become the "senior boomer" generation. One third of all Americans alive today were born between 1946 and 1964, and they are affectionately known as the "baby boomers". They have gone through American history and had a major impact on almost every industry as they have aged. Now they will begin retiring in the next five years or so, and the health care industry in it's current form is simply unable to cope with such huge numbers of Americans needing care. Costs for facility care is reaching $70,000 per year in many areas and that figure is rising at more than 5% annually, which means that it should double within the next fifteen years or so.

4. Government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are already stretched thin in their ability to pay for care for the current crop of seniors. In fact, we are already spending 44% of the federal budget on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and if we do nothing the U.S. Comptroller general predicts that these three programs will consume nearly 75% of the budget each year by 2030. Obviously, this kind of expenditure on the part of the federal and state governments is simply unsustainable.

5. There is an appalling lack of education and appreciation about the risks and challenges presented by long term care among the general U.S. population, especially seniors. Very few of them have made any reasonable preparation for their own long term care if it should be needed later on. Because it is an issue that few want to think about, they often tend to procrastinate making any meaningful decisions on the subject and that in itself is a decision to set themselves up for financial and emotional catastrophe should the need for long term care arise.

Because of the reasons listed above, it should be obvious to any reasonable person that long term care issues are a runaway train heading for the American economy within a relatively short period of time unless steps are taken soon on the part of both the federal and state governments and the American public to plan more effectively. We all need to bring more attention to these issues in our own communities and sound the alarm while there is still time.