 LTC Bullet: CareScouting LTC Friday, April 4, 2025 Seattle— LTC Comment: This year’s Genworth/CareScout cost of care survey is a marvelous tool. Details after the ***news.*** *** MORE CARESCOUT NEWS: 4/3/2025, “CareScout Partners with Dr. Judy Benjamin on Her Walk Across America,” Genworth/CareScout Quote: “On Saturday, April 5, Judy Benjamin, PhD, a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, will take her first steps on the more than 3,000-mile journey across the country to raise awareness for alternative ways to stay healthy at any age. Over five months, she will walk from San Diego, California, to St. Augustine, Florida, following the Adventure Cycling Association Southern Tier route. … CareScout, a leader in long-term care and aging solutions, is proud to partner with and support Dr. Benjamin on this journey. This collaboration reflects and reinforces CareScout’s commitment to empowering individuals and families with the knowledge and resources to plan for aging with confidence and dignity.” LTC Comment: Go Judy! Go CareScout! ***
LTC Comment: The Boy Scouts’ motto is “Be Prepared.” When it comes to long-term care (LTC) planning, there is one tool all consumers should study carefully to become prepared. Genworth and CareScout (Center-corporate-members) released their 2024 Cost of Care Survey results on March 4, 2025. This is the survey’s 20th annual iteration and it has evolved to be a highly valuable interactive tool. As always, CareScout gives us the latest account of care costs by type showing the traditional categories as below. (I’m intentionally not focusing here on the data. Go to the source for that. For now, just consider how vast and valuable the extractable information is.) In-home care Homemaker services Home health aide Community and assisted living Adult day health care Assisted living community Nursing home care Semi-private room Private room How do you want to see the cost of care displayed? Hourly? Daily? Monthly? Annually? One click displays the relevant data however you want to read it. Want to check costs in your state of residence? Simple. Just click your state on the U.S. map. Then, again, choose hourly, daily, etc. Maybe your big concern is the trend in care cost. Scroll down to find a table showing 2024 and 2023 national median values for hourly home care, daily adult day health, and monthly assisted living and nursing home costs followed by their annual percent change (increase). None of these categories went down in cost. Some went up dramatically, such as hourly homemaker services (10 percent), monthly assisted living (10 percent) and monthly nursing home for a semi-private room (the level that Medicaid funds) (7 percent). Keep scrolling down to find charts showing the increase in all the categories over the past two years. If that doesn’t scare you enough, try this … Go back almost to the top of the website and look for “Calculate Future Cost.” Now pick any decade from 2024 to 2074 and click for the estimates of future costs from CareScout’s crystal ball. Want to fine tune even more? You can pick any year in between. On top of that, you can still choose whether to see hourly, daily, monthly or annual data! But wait, there’s more! (I feel like a pitchman.) CareScout lets you choose your expected rate of inflation from one to five percent. Given that some care categories are rising in cost faster than five percent already, 1 to 5 percent, may be too conservative, so that should be taken into account. By now, CareScout surely has your attention. But maybe it’s too late for these numbers to scare you straight into searching for a LTC insurance policy. In that case, CareScout offers a link to “Find Quality Care.” There you’ll find “726 CareScout Quality Network Providers.” Your Center for Long-Term Care Reform has posted links to the annual Genworth/CareScout cost-of-care surveys on our members-only website (The Zone) every year since 2004. Click here to join the Center and get your own user name and password. You’ll find tons of useful information in The Zone and you’ll receive our weekly LTC E-Alerts and bi-weekly LTC Bullets. Want daily insights about everything happening in LTC? Become a premium member to receive our daily LTC Clippings. Find all our individual and corporate “Membership Levels and Benefits” here. |