“Protect Your Family From Taxes And Long-Term Care Costs,” by Christopher Berry, Forbes “The first step for protection can be to create an asset protection trust, which, once funded, can protect against the cost of nursing home care. The way it works is that once assets are moved into the asset protection trust, it starts a five-year race, after which time everything inside of the trust is protected from the costs of nursing home care, which can run upwards of $8,000 per month. Medicaid can help pay for the cost of long-term care; however, Medicaid looks back five years.” LTC Comment
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“The 2020 Medicare Advantage Plan Atlas, for Agents,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Medicare program managers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have just flooded the CMS website with two giant, computer-crashing files of 2020 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plan data. The files show how much each insurer’s plans will cost in each county, and they give some hints about what the benefits will be like. The total number of plan entries has increased 18% this year, to about 58,000. The database includes all sorts of specialized plans and subsidized plans that might not be the typical
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“Tickle me, Earmo,” by Gary Tetz, McKnight’s LTC News “’EAR ‘TICKLING’ MAY SLOW EFFECT OF AGING ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM’: As I read this, my overactive imagination conjured up a therapy situation involving a pink feather boa, seductively administered by a velvet-voiced supermodel into my auditory canal. Oh, and it would also make me live forever and is reimbursable under PDPM [Patient Directed Payment Model, the radical new reimbursement system about to be imposed on providers by CMS]. But the photo that ran with the article communicated something entirely different. It was just a guy with electrodes clipped to his
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“Private Medicare Plans’ Premium Rates Hit 13 Year Low,” by Tony Pugh, Bloomberg Law “Seniors can expect more plan choices and lower rates next month when they enroll in one of the private health plans that provide Medicare benefits. Monthly premiums for Medicare Advantage plans will be, on average, the lowest in 13 years, and down 23% from 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced on Sept. 24. Together with a 13.5% decline in the average monthly basic premium for Medicare prescription drug coverage, beneficiaries have saved about $2.65 billion in premium costs since 2017, CMS estimates.” LTC Comment (from
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