Overcoming the Challenges to Aging Gracefully

Medical advances have allowed people to live much longer than previous generations. While modern medicine has given us tools to stay alive, it doesn’t necessarily eliminate the natural wear and tear our bodies and minds take over our lifetimes. As a result, our later years can sometimes come with a variety of health issues that are not easy to deal with. The better we can take care of ourselves when we are younger, the more likely we are to lessen the health challenges faced in older age. However, even if you’ve taken excellent care of yourself throughout your life, as the saying goes “Father Time is Undefeated”, and if you live long enough, you are likely to have some health concerns that go along with advanced age. If you find yourself in that place or are caring for someone who is, there can be a physical, emotional, and financial toll taken on all who are involved. In this issue of the newsletter, we will look at just a few things you can do to better prepare for living in or caring for someone going through the challenges of aging.

Understand What Health Care Will and Will Not Do
For this discussion looking at aging adults, we are talking about people well past age 65, which is the age at which you gain eligibility for Medicare. Some people may work past age 65 and still have health insurance outside of Medicare, but most people at that point in life will be enrolled in some form of Medicare. It is important to understand you’re your Medicare options are, but breaking down all of the nuances of Medicare is beyond the scope of what we will cover here. Many people assume that if they have Medicare in one of its many forms, that insurance covers any costs related to their health care. Unfortunately, that can be an incorrect assumption depending on what you are dealing with. Medicare, like health insurance in general, is intended to pay claims for treatment that is employed to prevent or resolve a health situation, and depending on how the Medicare coverage is structured, it often does an excellent job of covering the vast majority of costs associated with care. What neither health insurance nor Medicare is setup for is to pay for health situations that are expected to persist indefinitely. Those are the types of situations that often come with aging. Whether it is a chronic disease, inability of the body to do things it once was able to, or cognitive issues, many of the conditions that come with aging may not be able to be cured. If that is the case, there is a real limit to what health insurance, including Medicare, can do to cover the associated costs of care.

Have a Plan in Place for Long Term Care
Because there are such limits to health insurance coverage, it is worth your while to have some type of plan to address health issues that may persist long term. That plan can take many forms, but it is important to have a plan rather than just relying on things to be taken care of for you. For some, having family or friends serve as more informal caregivers is the route they want to go. As long as the people tasked with the caregiving agree to serve in that role and are up for the commitment, this often is the most cost-effective way to handle caregiving. The challenge is that if those people are not skilled in the role of caregiving, the recipient may not receive all of the care they need to live safely and comfortably with the health issues they have. The next type of care is to engage more skilled individuals to provide the needed caregiving support as much as is needed. When this type of caregiving is contracted on a limited basis, while usually more expensive than the informal caregiving, it can also provide a relatively cost-effective solution, where the caregivers are typically paid by the hour. Quite often, as a person ages, they may have more limited caregiving needs initially, but as they continue aging, those needs may increase. Using skilled caregiving in this scenario as needs progress can begin to become more financial difficult to sustain. It is then that you may want to consider other options for caregiving and/or look at other ways to cover the cost. If you have substantial assets and/or income, you may be able to self-fund the cost of care. However, if those resources are limited, some other form of long-term care protection may be appropriate. Options include traditional long-term care insurance, life insurance that provides living benefits that can be accessed for chronic illnesses, benefit riders from annuities, and what are called hybrid products that typically blend annuities and life insurance in some fashion to cover claims associated with long-term care costs. These insurance related products tend to require that the individual needing care be unable to perform 2 out of the 6 activities of daily living (ADL) because that is often when the need for some type of caregiving is warranted. Outside of engaging caregivers to take care of people in place, you may find that moving the aging person into some type of skilled care facility is a more economical solution. That is not because these facilities are inexpensive, but because they have resources in place who can serve the needs of a collection of residents under one roof. Of course, there is a cost for the access to the resources, but the cost is spread out to all of the residents, so it may provide the needed level of care at a lesser cost than trying to contract the services independently.

Identify Someone to Advocate for You
Switching gears from insurance and cost issues, the issue of care itself is a critically important one, which if neglected, can end up being more costly than necessary. Part of a plan for care in older age is knowing who will help to ensure you get the care you need. It is important that you have the necessary written documents that provide the legal basis for your intended health care agents to act according to your wishes. That can be executed through the use of a Living Will, Health Care Power of Attorney, or Advanced Directive for Health Care. As important as having the legal structure in place is, it is also extremely important that you have representation locally to advocate for you if you find yourself in any type of health care facility. That includes the hospital, a rehabilitation facility, assisted living facility, or nursing home. All like facilities are not created equal. Some have workers who are more skilled or more caring than others, but even for those that have competent and caring workers, the reality is that the staff is often stretched thin, so some patients may not get all of the attention they need. If there is one thing from this article you should make it a point to do, that would be to identify someone(s) who you know will be present and visible to the health team that is tasked with caring for you if you have to spend time in any health facility. Their presence will naturally bring more attention to the situation and hopefully result in a higher level of care.

Stewardship Emphasis

With age there tends to come wisdom, and part of that wisdom should be making the necessary provisions for the inevitabilities of aging.

The Empowerment Channel |Volume CCXVIII | Dedicated to Promoting Financial Education through Stewardship