America is aging and the cost of providing healthcare for the elderly is increasingly rapidly. Most Americans will end up paying for long term care services with their own financial resources. It is incorrect to believe that Medicare and Medicaid were designed to cover long term costs for the typical American.
The cost of being placed in a nursing care home is currently about $75,000 a year, with costs increasing at the rate of about five percent a year. If you require nursing home care for any extended period of time it will likely break your bank.
The typical American has three possible courses of action to take to reduce long term care costs. Long term care insurance is an option that many people are currently reviewing. On average, depending on how much coverage you purchase, the cost will be in the range of $1,000 to $3,000 a year. The older you are, the higher the cost will be. This cost is in addition to your current living costs.
Informal care is probably the most common type of long term care in the nation. Because a family member provides the care, there are no costs associated with hiring healthcare professionals. Although informal care is cheap, it comes with a significant amount of psychological stress on the person providing the care. The typical American caregiver is the wife of the patient who works full time and puts in an additional 20 hours of caregiving a week. With this option your current living expenses remain the same.
The final strategy involves moving to another country and taking advantage of the lower price of healthcare. In other words, you will outsource your healthcare costs to another country. You may discover that the cost of living plus long term care may actually be less than your current living expenses.
More and more, countries around the world are targeting retirees and building the healthcare services to attract them. The cost of care for a retiree in an assisted living facility (home + food + healthcare) can be as little as $1,000 a month. The outsourcing of long term care to a developing country is slowly becoming an alternative that more people are likely to consider.
Developing countries such as Mexico are currently building their long term care industry and targetting the American retiree. Progressive countries like Japan have begun to develop retirement communities in the Philippines to take advantage of the lower cost of living and healthcare in that country.
