Wapo article on looming LTC crisis

My husband was a blue collar worker. Me, I wanted to raise my kids till they were school age. I have had full and part-time jobs just to keep my foot in the door. My jobs were the xtra, we lived on his salary. My husband took out bonds. Which some we didn't cash in till over 30 years old and invested that money. Now retired, not adding to that investment but not touching it either. If I had worked most of our married life, I don't think we would have ever saved enough to be in an AL or MC for an extended time.

And I agree, we save for a rainy day and that rainy day is paying for our care. People need to get out of that mindset that they need to leave something for our kids. And kids, feeling that they should inherit.

The woman in the article does not have to keep her husband in MC. Seems he is a two person assist. He is ready for more care than a MC has. I would wonder if this woman is aware that she can have her assets split. That husbands split goes to his care. Then Medicaid is applied for. A lot of states, for AL and MC, allow the 2 yr at least private pay and then apply for Medicaid.

This article is not telling the whole story. There are options out there.

No amount of saving for the average person is going to fund memory care or assisted living as describes in this article. You would have to have millions of dollars.

Better to just cut off all medical procedures for anyone with alzheimers or dementia and let nature take its course.

Getting old is the cruelest joke on humanity by god, the universe or whatever you want to call it.

"It is disturbing that the only option is to completely spend down and impoverish yourself,” said Pearson, who is now executive director of the Peterson Center on Healthcare.

I don't understand why it's not considered "doable" to spend your own funds on your care as you grow old.

It's why my parents saved . It's why I saved.

casole, thanks for linking the Washington Post article "Senior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren’t ready."

I would be curious to know if the early Boomers were more ready than the later Boomers. Boomers were born 1946-1964. I know we [1946] are ready as my parents were the children of the Great Depression, thus saved big time for that "rainy day" from which we learned.

I realize not everyone today can save like we could way back when. New technology is adding a lot of expense to every day life.

This can be downright scary what the future might hold. Will Medicaid even be a thing with such rising prices of aging care?

I've not read the article but anyone who wasn't aware there is already a crisis in LTC and that it is only going to get worse hasn't been paying attention. I've long joked that since I'm at the tail end of the baby boom generation by the time I need it the system will either be fantastic or broken beyond repair (although it's not a very funny joke😔)