Medicare does not cover most long-term care, like ongoing help with bathing, dressing, or living in a nursing home. Planning ahead with other financial tools is important, because the costs can be significant.
This is one of the biggest gaps in Medicare, and it surprises a lot of people. Medicare will pay for short-term skilled nursing care after a qualifying hospital stay, and it covers some home health services when specific medical criteria are met. But it does not pay for custodial care, which is the ongoing help most people picture when they think of a nursing home or assisted living. That includes help with daily activities like bathing, dressing, eating, and getting around.The costs for that kind of care are substantial. In Utah, nursing home and memory care costs vary by location and facility, but they are rarely affordable without a plan in place.Medicaid (not Medicare) does cover long-term care for people who qualify financially, but it requires spending down most of your assets first. That is a path many families end up on, but it is not always the outcome people wanted.Long-term care insurance is one tool that can help, though it is most affordable and available when purchased before health issues develop. Some life insurance policies also have long-term care riders. A financial planner who specializes in retirement planning can help you think through the options that make sense for your situation.Medicare alone is not a long-term care plan, and waiting to think about this until you need care usually means fewer options.
Utah's ADRC can connect you with local resources, including information about Medicaid eligibility and community-based care programs that may help reduce costs for older adults who want to stay at home longer.
For you, this means long-term care planning is separate from Medicare planning, and the earlier you think about it, the more choices you are likely to have.
Our Commitment to Reliable Medicare Information
At Resting Sycamore Advisors, we work to provide accurate, current, and trustworthy information about Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, and Special Needs Plans.
To do that, we use data published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which is the official source for Medicare plan and enrollment information.
Our Medicare plan pages and comparison tools are powered by CMS datasets, including:
When possible, we link to the original CMS resources so you can review the source material directly.
We follow the CMS release schedule and update our website as new data becomes available.
We load new plan year Landscape and PBP files before the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period (October 15 through December 7). We also monitor CMS.gov for updates or revisions and refresh our content when needed.
We update enrollment and performance data as CMS publishes revised files, which are typically released monthly or quarterly.
We routinely monitor CMS announcements for corrections, reissued files, or other changes and update our pages accordingly.
Each plan page includes a Last Accessed date so visitors can see when the source information was most recently reviewed.
CMS data can be difficult to read in raw form. To make it easier to use, we format and organize the data for clarity.
This includes:
All data values come from CMS. We do not change the underlying values beyond formatting, organization, and presentation.
We keep internal records of the CMS dataset versions used on our site.
If CMS issues corrected or revised files, we update our website to reflect the latest available version.
Please keep the following in mind:
For personalized Medicare assistance, please use these official resources: