What percentage of people receive long-term care? Approximately 70% of people age 65 and older will need some form of long-term care during their lifetime. The following table shows that, in general, more people use long-term care services at Home Care in Garnet Valley PA (and for longer) than in facilities. According to the American Long-Term Care Insurance Association (July 2002), 51% of women age 65 and older will need paid long-term care in Garnet Valley PA. Meanwhile, 39 percent of men over 65 will need this type of attention in Garnet Valley PA. Nearly two-thirds of Americans age 40 and older expect to need help as they age, while government statistics show that 70 percent of people 65 and older will need at least some form of long-term care and 50 percent will need extensive services, 6.7 19 percent think it's very or extremely likely that they will need care in the future, 45 percent think it's likely, and 35 percent think it's not too likely or unlikely.
Most, but not all, of the people who need long-term care are older people. Approximately 63% are people aged 65 and over (6.3 million); the remaining 37% are 64 years old or younger (3.7 million). For most older adults with long-term care experience, that care was provided in a home, not in a nursing home or in a community for the elderly. The serious needs of LTSS and the receipt of paid LTSS increase with age and are relatively common among women, people of color, and older adults with limited education. If you would like to speak with a long-term care insurance specialist who can share information and the costs of long-term care insurance, call the Association at 818-597-3227 (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.
to 1 p.m., West Coast time). While support for a long-term care insurance program, similar to that of Medicare, administered by the government, is lower among Republicans, it continues to receive majority support. In 2002, $16.4 billion in Medicaid was spent on home and community services related to long-term care. People need long-term care when a chronic condition, trauma, or illness limits their ability to perform basic personal care tasks, called activities of daily living (ADL) (such as bathing, dressing, or eating) or instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) (such as household chores, preparing meals, or managing money).
In addition, most older adults say they would like the federal government to spend a lot or a lot of effort this year helping people with the costs of continuing livelihood assistance. Most people age 40 and older support many individual policies to help people prepare for the costs of long-term care. When they need long-term care, most older Americans rely on friends and family members to provide that care at home. Seventy percent of adults who survive to age 65 develop serious LTSS needs before they die, and 48 percent receive some type of paid LTSS throughout their lives.
Women are also about two-thirds more likely than men to receive long-term care in a nursing home throughout their lives (34 percent vs. 20 percent), and about twice as likely to receive long-term care in a Medicaid-funded nursing home (17 percent vs. 8 percent). Only 28 percent of older adults who receive paid care by the LTSS, or only 13 percent of all older adults, receive these paid services and support for more than four years.
Studies have shown that providing long-term care services at home or in the community is a cost-effective alternative to nursing homes. The next generations of older adults will have fewer children to care for, and more women between the ages of 50 and 60, who provide much of the care that older adults receive, will work outside the home. In particular, people themselves with some experience in long-term care9 value the ability of their local community to meet some of these needs more positively than those who have not received or provided long-term care in the past.
