The National Care Planning Council is a leader in providing books on timely subjects for long term care planning. Below are five of our popular books.

"How to Deal with 21 Critical Issues Facing Aging Seniors"
"How to Apply for Department of Veterans Affairs Benefits" (2023 Edition)
"The 4 Steps of Long Term Care Planning"
"Protect Assets from Nursing Home Costs"

Long term care benefits include services from VA Health Care, from state veterans homes and disability income programs such as Compensation or the Aid and Attendance Pension benefit.

Request Help from a Veterans Advocate
Senior Veterans Service Alliance
List of VA Medical Centers and Clinics
List of VA Cemeteries
List of State Veterans Nursing Homes
List of State and County Service Officers

The need for long term care arises when an individual requires from someone else, assistance with medical care, daily activities, comfort, supervision or advice. Most long term care is provided by family members.

Read the Article: About Long Term Care
Lists of Eldercare Services in Your Area
Find a State Care Planning Council

These are links to online news sources and to online magazines that deal with long term care issues. We also provide a number of radio interviews dealing with long term care issues. These are interviews with experts in the field.

Go to News and Interviews
About Long Term Care Link (the NCPC)
National Care Planning Council Articles

Caregiving involves two groups of people who provide long term care. Roughly 60% of all care is provided by family members who receive no pay for their time. These folks are usually called informal caregivers. The balance of care is provided by formal caregivers who are volunteers or paid professionals.

Read the Article: About Caregiving
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Even though long term care can be the greatest crisis an elderly person can experience, there is an appalling lack of preparation among older Americans. Scarce government funds and changing demographics make the need for planning even more critical than ever.

Article: Need for Long Term Care Planning
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Roughly 70% of all long term care is provided in the home primarily by a spouse, a daughter or daughter-in-law. More family caregivers are in the workplace or live far away and are finding it difficult to care for loved ones at home. Help is available in a number of ways.

Article: Understanding Family Caregiving
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"The 4 Steps of Long Term Care Planning"

Planning for long term care is a process for two generations. As a general rule, the older generation completes seven logical steps in this process. For a generation preparing for retirement the seven planning steps occur in phases before and after retirement.

Article: 7 Steps of Long Term Care Planning
Find Eldercare Services in Your Area
Read our new book about these steps

Home Telehealth is a useful home care service for rural areas where distances are great and nurses and aides find it difficult to visit patients. The home Telehealth patient uses vital sign monitoring attached to a computer and consults with the home care personnel over the phone and using the computer to feed information.

Read the Article: About Home Telehealth
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Most family caregivers simply don't know where to turn for help and advice. This is the largest article on the site and covers vital services that all families should consider using. Many of these services go unused, simply because of lack of knowledge. In most cases, these services could save time, money and caregiver stress.

Article: Understanding Life Resource Planning
Lists of Senior Care Services in your Area

Adult day care services have been around for about 30 years but providers have found it difficult to stay in business and families seem reluctant to use the services. This is unfortunate because this service can help people stay in their homes longer by providing medical care and giving care givers a rest. Next year Medicare may start paying for these services as an alternative to home care and this will give this industry a shot in the arm.

Article: Adult Day Care Services
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Having money to pay for long term care when the time comes is probably the most important part of the planning process. For a younger generation, long term care insurance makes the most sense. For the older generation that hasn't provided funds for care, there are other options that might be available. But they never work as well as the insurance. This article also examines the past and future effect of inflation on various care services.

Article: Paying the Cost of Care
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Many active seniors are selling their homes and using the equity to purchase a retirement living arrangement on the seashore, in the mountains, in the desert or in the South where it's warm. Some seniors find new living arrangements that offer various degrees of eldercare. This article examines the various retirement living arrangements for the elderly.

Article: Aging Communities with Personal Needs Support
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This is the most in-depth and comprehensive treatment of long term care insurance available anywhere; either for sale or for free. For those of you who want all the details, including numerous charts, this is the article for you. Estimates are that costs for this insurance are going up about 12% a year for the same buying age. You should not delay buying.

Article: Understanding Long Term Care Insurance
Find a Long Term Care Insurance Specialist

Prior to assisted living, elderly people who could not remain in their homes for various reasons had to go to a nursing home for care. Assisted living is an alternative that provides a more homelike environment, a more stimulating atmosphere and is generally about 60% of the cost of a nursing home.

Article: About Assisted Living
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Find Alzheimer's Facilities & Care

This article discusses estate planning strategies for the elderly. This is not legal advice and an attorney should be used to prepare these documents. Many elderly fail to provide these documents for their family and when the time for care comes, family are scrambling to try and straighten out the mess.

Article: The Importance of a Will
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Find a Trust Administrator

For many care recipients long term care is an evolving process of losing more and more physical or mental capacity. A nursing home is usually the last stop in this process. The nursing home is equipped to handle medical problems, disability and in some cases behavior problems that cannot be handled by any other provider. Because there are now so many other options for care prior to a nursing home, the trend is that residents on average are much sicker and older than in the past.

Article: Nursing Homes
Find Nursing Homes in Your Area
Find Alzheimer's Facilities & Care

Medicaid planning has gotten a bad name because a handful of practitioners have abused the system and taken unfair advantage of taxpayers. But Medicaid planning is really a useful strategy and is typically used to save what few assets are remaining for Medicaid spend down and to provide adequate income for the healthy spouse at home. Medicaid often robs the healthy spouse of a quality standard of living by not allowing enough needed assets and income.

Read the Article: Medicaid Planning
Find a Medicaid (Medi-Cal) Planner
Find Medicare Plans

Hospice care is a valuable service and generally under used except for terminal cancer patients. Hospice allows for compassion and dignity in the process of dying. Most families wait too long to have their doctor prescribe hospice from Medicare. It should be considered at an earlier stage.

Read the Article: About Hospice Care
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The life settlement and a related product called a viatical allow an investor to free up cash for an individual by investing in that person's death. The investor purchases the individual's life insurance policy for less than value and then recoups the investment plus interest with the death payout when the insured dies.

Read the Article: Life Insurance as a Planning Tool
Find a Life Settlement Specialist

Medicare provides limited coverage for home care and for nursing home rehabilitation from a three day hospital stay. If the patient is not recovering, Medicare eventually quits paying. Medicare also covers hospice care. The VA will also cover limited home care, assisted living and nursing home care under certain conditions. In addition many states have VA state nursing homes.

Article: Understanding Medicare
Book: "How to Apply for Veterans Benefits"
List of VA State Nursing Homes
Find a Veterans Benefits Consultant

After 15 years, reverse mortgages are finally starting to catch on. A reverse mortgage (Home Equity Conversion Mortgage) allows someone to tap the equity in his or her home and use it for anything. There are no income or credit requirements for this loan. It's the same as any other loan -- you own the title and the bank holds a lien. There is no requirement to make payments while you are alive and still living in the home.

Read the Article: Using a Reverse Mortgage
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Medicaid provides nursing home coverage for elderly people over age 65 and for younger disabled people on SSI. Except for 13 states that test for income, in all other states, a person can receive Medicaid nursing home if assets are less than $2,000 and income is not sufficient to pay the full cost of care. Medicaid will make up the difference. Medicaid waivers are used to cover home care and assisted living services in all states. But in many states nursing homes are favored over these waiver programs.

Article: Understanding Medicaid Long Term Care
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Find an Elder Law Attorney

Elder or geriatric care managers are invaluable in helping family caregivers cope with the burden of caregiving. Everyone should use a care manager when the time for care comes. Unfortunately it's just the opposite. Family think they can do it themselves and rarely spend the money. Using a care manager is no different than using an attorney or a CPA. The family is confronting the maze of long term care services for the first time. The care manager has been there many times. A care manager will save time, money and stress.

Read the Article: Care Manager Services
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Area agencies on aging are the designated managers for state service and planning areas. A service and planning area is a geographic area of the state with more than 100,000 people and containing a significant number of elderly over the age of 60 that can be effectively served by the area agency under the Older Americans Act.

Article: Area Agencies on Aging
List of State Aging Units & Area Agencies
Find a State Care Planning Council

This article goes into detail explaining how Medicare works and how Medicare supplements fit into the overall picture. A great deal of space is devoted to explaining the new Medicare Advantage plans and the new Medicare prescription drug, part D program. An effort is made to explain how they all fit together and the advantages of various coverages. We also provide step-by-step instructions on how to sign up for the new prescription drug plan.

Supplements, Advantage Plans, Part D
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More about Part D

A scholarly article on recognizing depression in those receiving care and recognizing that treating that depression could result in a better quality of life for the care recipient. Dealing with depression may also relieve the stress on caregivers.

Depression in the Elderly Population
Find a Geriatric Health Care Practitioner

An excellent how-to-do-it book for caregivers, produced by San Diego Mental Health Services. Contained here are 31 pages of great advice, tips and instructions on how to deal with an elderly loved one needing long term care.

Article: The Caregiver's Handbook
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There is a crisis in the health care treatment that elderly Americans receive in this country. Few doctors have training in providing health care to the elderly. As a result many seniors are over-medicated and under-treated and their quality of life may be severely affected. With proper treatment many of the afflictions of the elderly could be substantially reduced. Families should seek medical treatment through geriatric clinics or from geriatricians.

Article: Aging and the Attitude of Healthcare Providers
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A large number of families put up with family disagreements and family disputes and long lasting bitterness over the care of loved ones. Many people don't realize that a simple process called mediation could put their family back together again. Elder or family mediators bring disputing parties together and through mutual agreement and a written document help them to resolve their issues. This is an extremely valuable service.

Elder and Family Mediation Services
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Elder abuse is the "dirty little secret" of caregiving. Estimates are that only about 10% of all abuse is ever reported. And it's possible that 10% of elderly and disabled Americans suffer abuse at the hands of caregivers or family members. The most frequent abuse is not in nursing homes but in the homes of the persons receiving care. This could be neglect, physical abuse, verbal abuse or financial abuse where children are stealing assets.

Read the Article: The Hidden Secret of Abuse
List of State Protective Services
List of State Ombudsmen

Although most home care is provided by family, friends or volunteers, there is a growing trend to hire paid individuals or professionals to provide this care in the home. Traditional caregivers can't provide care because of full-time employment or parents live a long distance away. This article discusses the use of traditional home health agencies, live-in care providers and personal or non-medical home care companies.

Article: Professional Home Care Services
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This article discusses assistive technology, which is the use of devices to help with disability. Some of this equipment, labeled as durable medical equipment by Medicare, will be covered by Medicare. Such things as bed lifts, wheelchairs and scooters as an example. Also a variety of disability aids and help are discussed.

Article: Technology & Remote Monitoring
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Find Remote Monitoring and Medical Alert

Senior centers act as a focal point for older Americans to receive many aging services. They are a vital part of the aging network. For Area Agencies on Aging, the senior center has become a place where many AAA services can be provided, where outreach and targeting can occur and where feedback can be received from the elderly.

Read the Article: Senior Citizen Centers
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Find a State Care Planning Council

For those of you who prefer to find your own source material, we have included reference material that we particularly like; sources we feel are rich in facts and figures. So far we have included 102 of these references. If you have a source that you particularly like, please let us know and we will include it on our listing.

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This is a lengthy article that examines dying, final directives, grief and bereavement, palliative care, pain management, funeral arrangements, funeral services, funeral preplanning and pre-need planning. This last service has become quite popular in recent years where people prepay and preplan the entire final arrangements.

Article: End-of-Life Services
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