The Corporation for Long-Term Care Certification included an eye-opening article in one of their recent newsletters indicating that some of the financial assumptions that has been made about out-of-pocket expenses for long-term care has not been entirely correct. Here is an excerpt from that newsletter:

“A new analysis found that newly 30% of LTC costs are paid out-of-pocket – that’s 10% higher than previously estimated. The discrepancy is explained by factoring in the cost of assisted living, which had been excluded from previous data sets. Families contributed $64 billion of their own funds to pay for care in 2006 (that number is probably substantially higher today), with the money coming from home equity, income from adult children or retirement savings. All three of these asset sources have lost value in the recent downturn, putting more of a financial burden on the uninsured. “