Answer:  If you are a professional who helps families plan for or deal with ANY of their elder care matters, then you owe it to yourself to be listed on America's #1 online source for "Elder Care Experts"….

ElderCareMatters.com

ElderCareMatters.com is where you will find more than 2,000 competent, caring elder care experts located across America, including:

• Elder Law Attorneys
• Estate Planning Advisors
• Financial Planners
• Investment Advisors
• Geriatric Care Managers
• Insurance Professionals
• Life Care Planners
• Professional Organizers
• Reverse Mortgage Lenders
• Senior Move Managers
• Senior Real Estate Professionals
•  Tax Advisors
• Aging in Place Professionals
• Daily Money Managers
• And other elder care experts with long and successful careers working with seniors and their families

This is also where you will find some of America's best:

• Assisted Living Communities
• Alzheimer's / Memory Care Communities
• Continuing Care Retirement Communities
• Home Care Agencies

Together, we provide families across America with:

• Unparalleled professional expertise
• Up-to-date elder care information & answers to your elder care questions
• Competent, caring assistance with a wide range of elder care services

So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional who helps families with ANY of their elder care matters, then request today an Application for Membership in the national ElderCare Matters Alliance and get listed on ElderCareMatters.com - America's #1 source for "Elder Care Experts" plus information and answers about a wide range of elder care matters.

Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters, LLC
ElderCareMatters.com

 

 

 

Answer:  It depends what you mean by “respite care.”  If you mean this in the most general way, that is, finding an alternative source of supervision and assistance for your loved one while you are at work, then you can certainly do that on a regular scheduled basis.  You might arrange for a caregiver to come in to your home, or you might find an adult day center in your area.   Many adult day centers will provide transportation between the client’s home and the center, and they typically provide one or more meals each day.  In both of these cases, the client or family will need to pay for these services as they are not covered by Medicare.  If the client has long term care insurance, these services are typically covered expenses under the terms or the policy.  Some adult day centers offer a sliding scale payment structure or are subsidized by local or state governments.   In some states, clients who are covered by Medicaid are also eligible for services in the community on a regularly scheduled basis as part of a “diversion” or “waiver” program where the goal is to keep these individuals out of nursing homes which are generally more costly.  However, since Medicaid is a state run program, you need to become familiar with what is available in your state.

To find competent elder care professionals who are located near You and can help you with this type of elder care matter, go to: www.ElderCareMatters.com - A FREE online resource to find elder care experts plus elder care information & answers to your elder care questions.

Sheri Samotin, President
LifeBridge Solutions, LLC
Naples, Florida  34108
239-325-1880
Member of the ElderCare Matters Alliance, Florida chapter

At last, families across America have one resource they can tap into daily to relieve the stress of aging… ElderCareMatters.com

ElderCareMatters.com, along with the 1,350+ members of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, provides families with the elder care resources they need to plan for and deal with their issues of aging.  In fact, here is where you will locate, by state, some of America's top elder care professionals who provide a total of 68 different elder care services that will help you plan for and deal with your family's issues of aging, including: Advance Medical Directives Aging In Place Services Alzheimer's / Memory Care Communities Annuities  Arbitration  Asset Protection Planning Assisted Living Communities  Assisted Living Referral Services Bankruptcy Caregiving Education  Consumer Law Continuing Care Retirement Communiities Crisis Intervention Daily Money Management / Bill Paying Disability Income Insurance Elder Abuse Litigation Services Elder Law ElderCare Planning / Long-Term Care Planning Estate Administration Estate Liquidation Estate Planning Financial Planning Geriatric Care Management Guardianship / Conservatorship Health Insurance Hoarding Clean Up and Coaching Services Home Care Home Downsizing Services Home Health Care Home Modifications Hospice Care Independent Living Communities Investment Services Life Care Planning Life Insurance Litigation Long-Term Care Insurance Medicaid / Disability Planning Medical / Healthcare Medical Alert Systems Medical Claims Processing Medical Equipment & Supplies Medicare Consulting Medicare Supplemental Insurance Medication Therapy Management Moving / Relocation Services Personal Finance / Accounting / Tax Preparation Powers of Attorney Probate Public / Non-Profit Resources Real Estate Services Rehabilitation Services Residential Psychiatric Care Respite Care Retirement Planning Reverse Mortgages Securities Arbitration & Litigation Services Senior Move Management Senior Move Planning Social Security Disability Services Special Needs Planning Tax Law Tax Planning Transportation Services Trustee / Fiduciary Services Trusts VA Benefits Wills

If you and your family need help with your elder care matters, this is where you will find competent, caring elder care experts located near you who provide a total of 68 different services that will help you plan for and deal with your family's issues of aging.  Whether you are looking for: an elder law attorney in Philadelphia a geriatric care manager in South Florida a long-term care insurance professional in Fort Worth, a home care provider in Southern California, or an assisted living community in Phoenix (as shown in the photo above)… you can count on www.ElderCareMatters.com to help you find the Elder Care Experts and services that you will need in ALL 50 states (plus the District of Columbia).

Special Offer for ALL Elder Care Professionals:  The next 125 elder care professionals who apply for Lifetime Membership in the national ElderCare Matters Alliance will receive a 25% discount off the regular price of lifetime membership. So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional – take advantage of this special 25% discount offer and pay only $337.50 for a "lifetime membership" (and there are no annual membership dues, ever!) in the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.    To request a Membership Application, send an email to: info@ElderCareMatters.com.

Answer:  Unfortunately this is something more and more elders and their families are running in to.  This does relate to billing and especially the crackdown on hospitals in regards to overpayments for hospital stays.  This was never really intended to be a status for patients for more than about 24-48 hours, but increasingly families are experiencing what yours did with stays upwards of 3-10 days classified as observation status.  This is particularly problematic when a patient needs inpatient skilled nursing care afterwards, because Medicare requires a 3 day hospital stay (with admitted status) in order to cover subsequent rehabilitation or skilled nursing in a skilled nursing facility.  Additionally, the patient may be responsible for some services received during the hospital stay, which is essentially treated as an outpatient stay.

Be aware that Medicare recipients do have the right to appeal coverage decisions.  This is also an important issue for families to be aware of in order to be able to ask questions and get more details when a loved one is in the hospital.  The Medicare coverage (or non-coverage in the case of no qualifying hospital stay) of inpatient rehabilitation can be worth thousands of dollars, and may be key to a loved one’s recovery.

To locate experts in your state who can help you with this elder care matter, go to: www.ElderCareMatters.com/statechapters.htm

Shannon Martin, M.S.W., CMC
Aging Wisely, LLC
Clearwater, Florida  33756
727-447-5845

Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Florida chapter

Answer:  Legal problems that affect the elderly are growing in number.  Our laws and regulations are becoming more complex.  Actions taken by older people with regard to a single matter may have unintended legal effects.  It is important for attorneys dealing with the elderly to have a broad understanding of the laws that may have an impact on a given situation, to avoid future problems. 

Unfortunately, this job is not made easy by the fact that Elder Law encompasses many different fields of law.  Some of these include:

• Preservation/transfer of assets seeking to avoid spousal impoverishment when a spouse enters a nursing home
• Medicaid
• Medicare claims and appeals
• Social security and disability claims and appeals
• Supplemental and long term health insurance issues.
• Disability planning, including use of durable powers of attorney, living trusts, “living wills,” for financial management and health care decisions, and other means of delegating management and decision-making to another in case of incompetence or incapacity.
• Conservatorships and guardianships
• Estate planning, including planning for the management of one's estate during life and its disposition on death through the use of trusts, wills and other planning documents
• Probate
• Administration and management of trusts and estates
• Long-term care placements in nursing home and life care communities
• Nursing home issues including questions of patients’ rights and nursing home quality
• Elder abuse and fraud recovery cases
• Housing issues, including discrimination and home equity conversions
• Age discrimination in employment
• Retirement, including public and private retirement benefits, survivor benefits and pension benefits
• Health law
• Mental health law

Most Elder Law Attorneys do not specialize in every one of these areas.  So when an attorney says he/she practices Elder Law, find out which of these matters he/she handles.  You will want to hire the attorney who regularly handles matters in the area of concern in your particular case and who will know enough about the other fields to question whether the action being taken might be affected by laws in any of the other areas of law on the list.  For example, if you are going to prepare a new will and your spouse is ill, the estate planner needs to know enough about Medicaid to know whether it is an issue with regard to your spouse’s medical care planning.

David F. Anderson, Esq.
David F. Anderson, P.A.
Miami Lakes, Florida  33016
305-825-4052
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Florida chapter

Answer:  If you are an elder care professional and you would like to "get the word out to thousands of families across America in a cost effective way about how you can help them plan for and deal with their issues of aging", then you should join our 1,250 elder care experts as a lifetime member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.  And, now, if you are one of the next 250 members, you will receive a 25% discount off the regular lifetime membership price.

This 25% discount is available only to the next 250 elder care professionals who join the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.

So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional – take advantage of this special 25% discount offer and pay only $337.50 for a "lifetime membership" (and there are no annual membership dues, ever!) to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.

To request an Application for Lifetime Membership, send an email directly to: psanders@eldercarematters.com

Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters, LLC
1-877-379-4500
www.ElderCareMatters.com

If you are an elder care professional and you would like to "get the word out to thousands of families across America in a cost effective way about how you can help them plan for and deal with their issues of aging", then you should join our 1,250 elder care experts as a lifetime member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.  And, now, if you are one of the next 250 members, you will receive a 25% discount off the regular lifetime membership price.

This 25% discount is available only to the next 250 elder care professionals who join the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.

So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional – take advantage of this special 25% discount offer and pay only $337.50 for a "lifetime membership" (and there are no annual membership dues, ever!) to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.

To request an Application for Lifetime Membership, send an email directly to: psanders@eldercarematters.com

Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters, LLC
1-877-379-4500
www.ElderCareMatters.com

Answer:  The experts of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.

ElderCareMatters.com is now offering a NEW Ask an Elder Care Expert service.

Each week one of our 1,200 experts will answer your family's important questions about elder care matters – from legal, financial, housing, health care, etc.

If you would like to ask one of our Elder Care Experts a question about his/her areas of expertise, just send a short email (a few sentences only please) to:  Questions@ElderCareMatters.com

Every day we will post one of your questions along with an answer provided by our Featured Elder Care Expert of the Week to the homepage of www.ElderCareMatters.com (which is currently visited by thousands of families each week).  Yours may be one of the questions posted.

So bookmark www.ElderCareMatters.com and visit us daily as questions about a wide range of elder care matters are answered by some of America's top elder care professionals with years of experience helping families plan for and deal with their issues of aging.

Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters
1-877-379-4500
www.ElderCareMatters.com

The ElderCare Matters Alliance is a national organization of 1,200 elder care experts who help families across America plan for and deal with their issues of aging, including providing families with a host of elder care resources that can be found on www.ElderCareMatters.com

If you are a competent, caring elder care professional – you need to belong to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.

To request a Lifetime Membership Application to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, send an email to psanders@ElderCareMatters.com

www.ElderCareMatters.com – America's online source for elder care experts who help families plan for and deal with their issues of aging.

Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters
www.ElderCareMatters.com

Answer:  There is a variety of legal methods that can be used to prevent an elderly couple's entire net worth from being consumed by nursing home expenses.

First of all, Medicare does not pay for nursing home expenses.  It covers things like doctor visits, drugs, and a certain amount of hospitalization.  Medicare is a "status-based" benefit, which means that all your parents have to do qualify is turn 65.  It makes no difference how much they have in terms of income and assets.  As each of them turns 65, that person qualifies for Medicare.

Medicaid, on the other hand, is a "means-based" benefit, which means you have to qualify for it based on how much you have in the way of income and assets.  Although Medicaid is mostly funded by the Federal government, the States, who administer the program, are given a certain amount of leeway in setting the income and asset caps.  Different States also interpret and apply some of the other rules differently from each other, so it is important for you to seek State-specific advice.  The best we can offer here is general information.

The Federal guidelines set ranges of allowable income and asset caps, the most liberal being that a couple (where only one spouse needs nursing home care) may keep a total of $2,789 in monthly income, and they may own a house (having no more than $750,000 of equity), a car, household furnishings, a funeral plan, life insurance with a cash value of no more than $1,500, and $111,560 worth of other assets.  Note that these numbers are all maximums.  Many States are not this generous.

If the couple exceeds the Medicaid income cap, they are not necessarily disqualified from receiving Medicaid benefits.  Their "excess" income must be used to pay nursing home expenses, and Medicaid can kick in on nursing home expenses that are over and above the "excess" income amount.

If the couple's holdings exceed the asset limit, they are disqualified from receiving Medicaid benefits.  Accordingly, many of the acceptable Medicaid planning strategies involve "converting" nonexempt assets into exempt assets.  For example, if a couple lives in a State that allows the maximum asset amounts listed above, but has $200,000 worth of "other" assets, they will not qualify for Medicaid.  However, if their home has an equity of only $400,000, and if the "other" assets consist of cash, the couple can invest $88,440 ($200,000 minus $111,560) in such things as home improvements and furnishings, funeral plans, and a car, in order to bring their holdings within the asset cap.

Other legal strategies may be available as well.  In order to get a definitive answer in your jurisdiction, you need to consult a Medicaid expert in your State.  One excellent way to locate these kinds of resources is through http://www.eldercarematters.com/statechapters.htm, where you may find a listing of advisors in your locale.

Scott A. Makuakane, Esq., CFP
Est8Planning Counsel LLLC
Honolulu, Hawaii  96813
808-587-8227
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Hawaii chapter

Answer:  Medicaid is a program for medical-care coverage to the indigent.  Eligibility for Medicaid is determined based upon the assets and income of the applicant and applicant spouse.  Medicaid provides long term care benefits to those who qualify both medically and financially.

Medicare is an entitlement program based on whether a worker or their spouse paid adequately into the system during their lifetime.  Medicare generally covers hospitalization, durable medical equipment, hospice, and doctor's visits.

Medicare will pay for only 20 days of nursing home care after hospitalization.  It can cover an additional 80 days, but only after the individual has paid a daily co-payment.  Medicare will not pay for nursing home care after 100 days , no matter what.

Yvette N. Banker, Attorney at Law
Banker Law Office
Scottsdale, Arizona  85254
480-626-0182
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Arizona chapter

Answer:  Medicaid is a program for medical-care coverage to the indigent. Eligibility for Medicaid is determined based upon the assets and income of the applicant and applicant spouse.

Medicare is an entitlement program based on whether a worker or their spouse paid adequately into the system during their lifetime. Medicare generally covers hospitalization, durable medical equipment, hospice, and doctor's visits.

Yvette D. Banker, Attorney at Law
Banker Law Office
Scottsdale, Arizona  85254
480-626-0182
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Arizona chapter

Answer:  If there is a medical need for a hospital bed, a doctor can write a prescription and Medicare will pay for some or all of the cost.  Another option would be to contact Friends of Disabled Adults and Children to see if they can help.  They can be reached at 770-491-9014.

Cheryl Richards-Mann
Atlanta Home Care Partners, Inc.
Atlanta, Georgia  30329
404-228-0103
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Georgia chapter