Is long term care covered?
March 5th, 2010 | TriCare Help | Posted by Military Times
Q. I am a retired reservist who will be eligible for Tricare when I turn 60. I am also a current federal employee covered by the FEHBP. Do I need to purchase a separate long term care insurance policy or will my FEHBP, Tricare and eventually Medicare cover those expenses? What about my spouse?
When people talk about “long term care,” they often have in mind a nursing home type of environment where people go to live when they can no longer care for themselves.
It is a place where you can live, and be watched over and protected. Your meals will be provided and, if you are unable to “do” for yourself, you will be helped to eat, dress, bathe, attend to personal hygiene, and the like. In insurance and medical vernacular, such care is usually referred to as “custodial care.”
It is very expensive to live in a place where you have have nurses and aides of several kinds, and probably a doctor on call 24/7 to care for you and meet your needs with the “activities of daily living.” (That is a technical term used in the law.)
The federal laws that created both Medicare and Tricare make no provision to help pay for such living arrangements. In fact, both programs are specifically prohibited by law to pay for “custodial care.”
Other than specific long term care policies, I know of no commercial health insurance policy, such as your FEHBP plan, that will pay for it.
Only you can decide whether you and your wife need such insurance. But, you cannot count on Medicare and Tricare (Tricare for Life), or your FEHBP plan, to help pay for it. Those programs will continue to pay for your medical care, including hospitalization, and your pharmacy needs, just as they do now, but they cannot pay for the costs of being cared for in such a facility.
The insurance for that kind of “long term care” is expensive, and the older you are when you buy the policy, the more it costs.
Tags: FEHBP, long term care, Tricare For Life
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