Most people our age are under intense pressure: everything is quickly changing, the world simply isn’t what it used to be, and medical care is both impersonal and expensive!

One area that has not changed with the times is traditional estate planning. The cost of long term care and Medicaid planning are something that probably was not provided for or included in a will or living trust that your loved one with Alzheimer’s may already have.

It’s really important to understand that most attorneys who prepare estate plans have been taught using old cases, dealing with long-dead individuals who lived in a totally different time and place. From a health care standpoint, those old “death”-cases are pretty close to irrelevant.

Everything about today is changing rapidly, and one of the most important things to recognize is that during the last 100 years, the life expectancy of a North American has gone from only 47 years of age to around 82 years of age. Taking that into consideration, a staggering 1 in 10 people over age 65 have dementia or Alzheimers… but that number takes a frightening leap to fully ONE HALF of people over the age of 85 who have the disease!

We now face a wave of individuals who are living into their mid-80s and beyond. There are millions of people who face the high probability of living part of their lives in a long term care facility – especially those with memory problems. The traditional estate plan does not even take that mammoth tidal wave of change into consideration!

Typical estate plans are primarily designed to answer just a couple of questions, and to do it as cheaply as possible. Think about it; do you really want to take time out of a nice day and go sit down with a lawyer and talk about death and disability? Of course not!

So if you or your loved one are “normal,” then it’s very likely that even if you have created an estate plan, it’s old and stale. It was prepared pretty much by you saying to the attorney, “You know, everything is really simple. I don’t have any complicated issues, so I just want this to be as quick and inexpensive as possible.”

The end result is that the attorney asks you a couple of questions: your name, the name of your loved ones and who you want to leave things to. If your loved one was like most people, they wound up creating what’s called a “Sweetheart” or “I Love You” will. What that means is they told the attorney, “Listen. If I die I want to leave everything to my sweetheart. If she’s dead (or he’s dead), then I want to leave everything equally to my children. Nothing complicated. Quick and simple – that’s all we really need.”

Then the attorney, who had to comply with their desire to have it quick, easy and cheap, walks over to the paralegal, hands off this basic information, and the paralegal sticks it into a word processor that pulls up the same information that they had for the last guy that came through. They stick your loved one’s facts into somebody else’s form.

But that’s not the end of the story. There is a major underlying crack in the foundation that collapses completely when people don’t follow the “death”-rules of traditional estate planning. What if you:

1. Die quickly? Or,

2. Have a long term illness before you go?

Those lead to very different results.

The world has changed! According to the AARP, 70% of individuals who have reached age 65 will live a certain period of their lives in a long term care facility. For men, that could be an average of 2.2 years, and for women it’s an average of 3.7. What’s more, none of the public benefit programs, pensions, and traditional legal tools were designed to deal with millions of people facing long term care in nursing homes. What tends to happen when you have old, stale documents and then you don’t die quickly (but become disabled or have a memory impairment) is that the documents don’t help you save your hard-earned money. They just don’t work that way!

If this is the type of document your loved one with Alzheimer’s has, it’s time to get that changed now… if you wait, you could be putting your loved one in danger of being broke and out of money. The best thing you can do for your loved one is to put a special plan in place, that doesn’t ignore their need to have nursing care in the very near future. To find out if your loved one has a plan in place that will protect them (and their surviving spouse, if they die first), call my office at (913) 338-5713. We’ll tell you what steps you should take… or if there is nothing you need to do, we’ll tell you that, too.

Today we’re going to talk about something that confuses most people: the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.

They sound similar, right? Well, unfortunately many people fail to realize the differences between the two, which makes for big problems in the future. Surprisingly, most people think Medicare will “care” for them forever. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

When a friend of mine began his career as an elder law attorney, he was surprised at how few people knew the truth about Medicare and nursing home benefits. In fact, his own mother asked him one day, “Why are you focusing in the area of Medicare and Medicaid? There can’t be any money to be made helping people with those issues.” His mother is a very bright person, but even she did not understand the limitations of Medicare and what it would and would not pay for if you need to live in a nursing home.

Medicare and Medicaid sound similar, but are totally different programs. And for ANY senior, it’s vital to know the difference. Your future depends on it!

Medicare provides healthcare benefits for the over 65, blind, and disabled; while Medicaid provides medical benefits for the impoverished.

Medicare is primarily a type of public health insurance for those age 65 and older. In essence, it is their primary health insurance coverage. Many seniors are unaware that Medicare does not pay for long term care – it’s excluded! The confusion is easy to understand, because Medicare does pay for rehabilitation. So, if a senior citizen is enrolled in the traditional Medicare plan and is hospitalized for a stay of at least three days, and is then admitted into a skilled nursing facility, Medicare may pay – for a while. But once those Medicare benefits hit 100 consecutive days, you’ve hit the maximum.

And while we’re being frank, Medicare may not even cover you for the full 100 days – it’s based on the patient’s response to the rehabilitation. There must be some actual improvement, otherwise Medicare will decide that the condition is a long term care need and they’ll cut you off. Medicare really only cares about you if you can get better. Since diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s have no known cure today, rehabilitation is not possible – and Medicare isn’t going to pay for nursing home care for you if you have Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or a similar disease.

Unlike Medicare, few of us have any experience in dealing with Medicaid rules and guidelines. Medicaid is paid for by both federal and state funds but is “administered” on a state level. That means the federal government covers between 50-80% of the program costs within the state, and the state pays the rest. Therefore, rules can vary from state to state (even county to county) rather dramatically.

EVERY reader of this report should understand the differences between Medicare and Medicaid. The information below is designed to contrast the two programs:

***Medicare***
-Health insurance for seniors age 65+
-Federally controlled, uniform application across the country
-Pays for no more than 100 days of nursing home care
-Pays for primary hospital care and related medically necessary services
-Must have contributed to Medicare system to be eligible and generally be over age 65

***Medicaid***
-Needs-based health care program
-Controlled state by state, which created different regulations in each state of application
-Pays for long term care
-Pays for medications
-Must meet income and asset limits to be eligible and be over 65, disabled, or blind

So, as you can see, Medicare is health insurance, and Medicaid is public long term care coverage – but often there are stages in between that require examination and discussion. Don’t get caught off guard by the surprising differences in these two programs. The people in charge don’t seem to be able to keep it simple.

To learn more about your options, call us at (913) 338-5713. You need to be informed about your particular situation – and whether you’ll need to put in place some honest, legal strategies to protect your hard-earned assets and keep you safe for the future. Call to speak to one of my expert (and friendly) intake personnel to see if you need to take steps to safeguard your savings.

When someone is faced with the overwhelming job of finding a nursing home for a loved one in Kansas or Missouri, the question often asked is, “Where do I begin?” Although this is a job that no one wants to do, it can be done with forethought and confidence that the best decision was made for everyone involved.

When nursing home placement in Kansas City or surrounding areas is necessary, it is crucial that the family and/or potential resident decide what’s most important to them in looking for a facility. It is important that the resident’s needs and wants be included in the evaluation. Things such as location of the facility, if a special care unit is necessary and type of payer source should be considered when beginning this process.

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