Most Seniors Don’t Plan for the Most Devastating Portion of Their Lives

July 31, 2018 | by the National Care Planning Council

If we were to ask an older person what his or her most important concerns are we would probably get a variety of different answers. But according to surveys frequently conducted among the elderly, the most likely answers we would receive would include the following three principal concerns or wishes.

• Remaining independent in the home without intervention from others.
• Maintaining good health and receiving adequate health care.
• Having enough money for everyday needs and not outliving assets and income

Although the elderly are definitely concerned about the need for planning for these issues it is not often a priority. It is human nature not to worry about an event until it happens. The aging concerns or wishes listed above are not issues that seniors want to deal with at this point in their lives. If they happen – so be it – otherwise worry about things that are more easily dealt with. For example, everyone is concerned about having his house burn down or having an accident or getting an illness or ending up in the hospital and people do plan for these risks and have set money aside or bought insurance or prepared written documents to cover the unexpected.

For the elderly the actual advent of chronic poor health, running out of money or losing independence is probably the most devastating unexpected event that could happen to them. This is because any or all of these events typically remove any level of security an elderly person may have with the three major lifestyle concerns or wishes mentioned above. Typically they will have to rely on others for their care. This is called long term care. No other late-life event can be as devastating to the lifestyle the elderly are so concerned about maintaining. No wonder many elderly care recipients withdraw, become angry and suffer from severe depression.

Yet very few elderly spend money or time to plan for long-term care. It seems a paradox that someone would be more concerned about buying insurance for a home fire when the risk of needing financial or physical or mental support from someone else is 600 times more likely. Or what about the cost of insuring for an auto accident when the risk of needing care is 120 times more likely and is potentially 20 times more expense?

Or why the overwhelming concern to buy Medicare supplement insurance when without it Medicare would still cover most of their health needs after deductibles and co-pays? We're not recommending going without insurance coverage we're simply using it as an example of how people refuse to deal with the issue of their aging years and losing their money, their health or their independence or all of them. Ironically, older people painstakingly scrape together $100-$200 a month to buy Medicare supplement insurance to cover a risk about equal to the yearly premiums of the policy itself. Why not just put the money in a savings account? Or as another example, aging seniors will go without and sacrifice food, recreation and activities in order to hold on to the last few dollars in their savings accounts because of fear of an uncertain future. It would have been better to have planned for the future in the first place and there would be no need to hoard resources.

No one knows why people beyond age 65 are not more concerned about preparing for long-term care. Perhaps they have seen it in their family or among friends and seen the effect that it has. Because of the unsavory aspect of receiving long-term care, perhaps the elderly prefer to ignore it rather than embrace the need for it. Perhaps they mistakenly think the government will take care of them. Or they are assured that family and friends will provide the care when needed, but don't know how difficult it really is for loved ones to provide that care when the time actually comes. Whatever the case, without proper planning, the need for long-term care can result in the single greatest crisis in an elderly person's life.

This lack of planning will always have an adverse effect on the older person's family. It usually results in great sacrifice or financial cost on the part of the spouse or children. Or for those with no immediate family, long-term care can be a burden to extended family members.

The Current Generation Needs to Plan for Long-Term Care

As if the current lack of planning for long-term care were not a great enough burden on the immediate or extended family, the failure to plan, for the current generation of baby boomers, could be even more devastating on spouse or family in the future. Here is a list of factors that will make long-term care in the future an even more pressing burden than it is today.

• We are living longer. The population segment of the "very old", older than age 85, is the fastest-growing age group in the country. The older the person, the more likely the need for long-term care and the more likely a need for care which lasts not just months but years. Over 50% of the age group over 85 is receiving long-term care.
• The older the person the more likely the risk of onset of dementia. The Alzheimer's Association estimates about 46% of people over the age of 85 have dementia or Alzheimer's
• The number of overweight and obese people in the United States is increasing dramatically. Obesity is a major contributor to disability and poor health in the elderly. Estimates are that the effects of obesity will increase nursing home enrollments by an additional 15% to 20% by the year 2020.
• The ranks of the elderly are growing larger. The population of elderly over 65 will grow from about 45 million people today to about 77 million people in 2035, 17 years from now. Based on current estimates of the rate of long term care this means that in 17 years about 17 million elderly Americans will be receiving long term care.
• It is estimated that 6 out of 10 people will need long term care sometime during their lifetime.
• With a large and growing number of single person households there is no spouse and oftentimes no children to provide care. About 40% of the population is single.
• The birthrate is going down, families are getting smaller. The combination of fewer children, the increasing number of single person households and a growing number of elderly will eventually create a situation where there are more people needing care than there are available family caregivers.
• Out of approximately 116 million women in this country who could be employed in the workforce about 60% or 69 million are employed. With women being the traditional caregivers, this means only about 40% of traditional caregivers are at home and able to provide long term care for loved ones without having to juggle a work schedule as well.
• Children are moving far away or the elderly are relocating after retirement and this makes it difficult or impossible to provide the resulting long-distance caregiving.
• The number of elderly as a percent of the population is growing larger putting a burden on the tax base and availability of money for government programs and the availability of younger caregivers. Over the next 50 years the elderly will grow from about 12% of the population to over 20% of the population.
• Medical science is preventing early sudden deaths which often results in a prolonged life with impaired health and a higher potential need for long-term care.
• Government programs are already stretched thin for long-term care services and will experience even greater stress on available funds in the future.
• The government does not seem inclined to provide a national long-term care insurance plan
• There is a worldwide trend, in all major industrial countries, to not deal with the problem of long-term care and very few countries, including the United States , have taken the initiative to adequately address the problem.
• Most healthy people in their 50s and early 60s prefer to ignore this future problem and their lack of planning will further burden public programs in the future.

(source for statistics: Statistical Abstract of the United States)

The failure of the current pre-retirement generation to plan for long-term care will have an even greater future negative impact on our culture and our families than the lack of planning does today.