There are many places to look to find out how to prepare clients to get Medicaid to pay for long-term care costs, as well as some of the hardships involved. In this blog I want to point out a couple of important points to ponder:
1. Will Medicaid still be covering these costs when it is needed? For a client who is 60 years old, 80% of all long-term care costs occur after age 79, So will Medicaid still be there 20,25 or 30 years from now? It's better to adjust spending levels now to minimize the probability that Medicaid will be needed.
2. It is much better to know, for a given client's financial situation, what the probability is that the client will run out of money while alive and needing long-term care. That probability should be computed, and if unacceptably high for the client, should cause a reexamination of the client's retirement strategies (in particular, the client's spending strategy - can it be lowered to lower the chances of running out of money while alive?)
