As baby boomers retire and Americans live longer, the nation faces a crisis in its ability to finance the long-term medical and personal aid that many of us will require in old age.
Social Security and Medicare aren’t enough. And many Americans doubt they will have the money to pay for a lengthy stay in a nursing facility or a home aide.
A new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 36 percent of Americans over 40 are very confident that they will be able to fund their care into old age. Another 36 percent are “somewhat” confident, and 24 percent are not confident.
That represents an improvement from past years. In 2013, only 27 percent said they were very confident about their future care prospects. But the tens of millions of Americans who are either unconfident or confused about the issue is still troubling.
Roughly a third of respondents said they had not done any planning in regards to long-term care. Hopefully those who said they are ignoring the topic are on the younger end of the spectrum.
But it’s far from clear whether those who report planning for long-term care have actually taken the necessary steps to ensure the care they envision. Only 13 percent of adults said they were certain that they had a long-term care insurance policy.
Granted, it’s not necessarily because everybody’s a pessimist. Forty percent of the adults polled said they do not believe they will ever need long-term care. And 40 percent mistakenly believe that Social Security and Medicare will take care of the banal day-to-day care that millions of U.S. seniors require. The less money people have, the more likely they are to buy into that myth.
The great majority of Americans (77 percent) hope that whatever care they receive can take place in their own home, rather than at a nursing home.
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