Many Americans have raised their eyebrows after hearing reports on the skyrocketing prices of Long Term Care (LTC).  No one would ever dare compromising their lifetime savings for just a year in nursing home or assisted living, knowing that it would have damaging results to their loved ones. Learning that your parents or a loved one must be transferred in a facility or simply requires help from a caregiver, and you need more than half a million to  sustain a year for long term care, is one of the tragic news you’ll ever hear.

As life expectancy becomes longer than expected, millions of Americans will be affected since the majority of the senior population doesn’t have concrete retirement plans and insurance, and many are heavily dependent on government health care programs. Only a fraction of Americans have anticipated the likelihood of entering nursing homes or acquiring long-term illness and/or disability, so no wonder why a lot of senior folks and caregiving families are suffering the consequences of bad planning and decision-making. Even the healthiest people today may suffer any degenerative or geriatric diseases in the future. And, in fact, this proves that no one is in control of the future and one of the ways—next to faith—to lessen the weight of uncertainty is to entrust your future in long term care insurance.

However, many individuals commit mistakes when dealing with LTC because of lack of tact and knowledge on the subject. For them, it’s like treating a wound that may disappear overnight; but the reality is (as the name suggests) it can’t be resolved in a day or two.

The biggest mistake people commit when planning for future health care is they spend their entire savings on LTC services without looking at the dangers of becoming bankrupt and invalid at the same time. Relying on Medicaid and/or Medicare should be stripped off on your “dependency” list.