How to protect assets and pay for long-term care | Elder law 101

If you're caring for aging parents and feeling overwhelmed by finances, planning, or long-term care decisions, this episode is for you.

In this conversation, we sit down with elder law attorney Heidi Friedman to talk through what caregivers need to know — from protecting assets and avoiding costly mistakes to understanding Medicaid and VA benefits.

Hosted by Tina Rains, RN, and Melinda Lee Foster, this episode breaks down some of the most confusing parts of long-term care planning in a way that feels clear, practical, and manageable.

If you’ve ever wondered how to pay for long-term care, what happens if there’s no plan in place, or whether your family may still qualify for benefits, this episode offers helpful insight and direction.

In this episode:
• Why estate planning is not “one and done”
• What a durable power of attorney really means
• Common mistakes families make when planning for care
• How Medicaid and VA benefits work
• Ways to protect assets before it’s too late

Hosts:
Tina Rains, RN
Melinda Lee Foster

Guest:
Heidi Friedman, Florida Board-Certified Elder Law Attorney

About Heidi Friedman:
Heidi Friedman is a Florida Board-Certified Elder Law Attorney, entrepreneur, and advocate for seniors, veterans, and families navigating long-term care decisions. She is the founder of Friedman Elder Law & Estate Planning and Veteran Aid & Planning Services, where she helps families protect assets, secure government benefits, and plan for the realities of aging with more clarity and confidence.

Connect with Heidi Friedman

Thanks for listening to We Laugh So We Don’t Cry — honest conversations, real support, and a little laughter for the caregiving journey.

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🤍 Thanks to our sponsor, MasterPiece Care, for providing free caregiver guides and resources. You can also book a free conversation call with Tina Rains, RN through MasterPiece Care at the link above.

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Transcript

How families get started with planning

Speaker 3 0:00

We laugh so we don't cry.

Speaker 2 0:04

Holding up the ones we love with coffee courage and time. H i everybody. Hello. How's everyone doing? So let's talk today about finances. Oh my gosh. Finances are such a difficult thing, especially when you have a family member who has not planned well. And um, I know personally that watching my mom struggle with finances and not having means to be able to take care of things has been a little difficult, just saying. And so if you're that caregiver that has been struggling and watching your parents struggle, and now it's the burdens falling on you. Heidi Freeman, who's an attorney, she's an elder law attorney, is with us today, and we're so glad to have you, girl, because we need help. Yeah, it's a big deal.

Speaker 0:55

I I was just gonna say that we lost a brother-in-law. Uh, I did, and there was so much stress around trying to settle his estate and everything, but you're kind of like on the front end helping people plan so they don't have to worry about that stuff, right?

Speaker 1 1:11

Yes. So I'm basically, like I said, I'm an elder law attorney. So we're different than your estate lawyers. Your estate lawyers really deal with preparing those documents. So hopefully, if your brother had done proper planning or your brother-in-law had done proper planning, your your family wouldn't have had to go through probate and all of those kind of decisions because that really um does trigger so much anxiety in the family. And um it just it just creates a lot of uh issues that are unnecessary if people properly plan. So, and that's always the key, right? If you properly plan something, then things usually get a little bit better. The other thing that we do as an elder law attorney is we help people stay in control of their finances and control of their decisions. Because what happens if you don't properly plan and you don't you don't expect that things are going to happen, or you just think that they're not gonna happen if you don't if you don't plan for them. They do happen. And if you haven't properly planned for them, then you can lose control over just things that should be innately yours, like who should take care of me? Where should I stay? Um, who what's gonna happen to me when I need long-term care? What happens if I am terminal? Do you know, do I want life prolonging procedures? Do I want to lay there in a coma or do I not? Who do I choose to make decisions for me with regarding to my finances if I can't do it? So all of that stuff is all about your pre-planning and and really making those decisions while you still have control and capacity to do it.

Speaker 2:48

Right. So

Intro: Why elder law matters

Speaker 2:49

you're so your expertise is trying to help people because we were chatting a little bit before we started about like how to set up their finances. So, or like tapping into government programs or like people who are worried about the money, like what do you say to them? Like, how do you get them started?

Speaker 1 3:09

So it's interesting because what tends to happen is in my practice, and I've been doing this for over 20 years. I can't believe I've been I can't believe I actually didn't see that. Um, considering I'm only like 30. Uh right. But what tends to happen and what I see a lot, and I even saw if you can believe this in my own family, I'm definitely the shoemaker's kid that had no shoes, is that when parents get sick, a lot of times the child, the adult child, doesn't even know that how sick they are, doesn't know what their finances are, has not had that conversation with their parent about, you know, what do you want to have happen? Where are your money? Where's your money? Do you have a long-term care policy? Who are your doctors? Whose prescriptions are you? And they don't really have that. They they mostly know, oh, my mom doesn't want to go to a nursing home. Well, let's face it, I've been doing this, like I said, for 20 years. I've never had anybody say they want to go to a nursing home. But they don't know anything else. And it's such an important conversation that you should be having with your children. Um, or as a caregiver, you should have with the person you're caregiving. Now, a lot of times what happens is when you are already in the point where your caregiving, some of those decisions can't be made at that time anymore, right? Depending on the person that you're caregiving for. So then that falls

Durable power of attorney explained

Speaker 1 4:29

into did you have a proper durable power of attorney signed so that you can make those decisions for the person?

Speaker 4:35

Are there can you stop for a second? Can you stop for a second? Durable power of attorney. I want you to like stop and give it, give us like the the cliff notes, you know, so that we are all on the same page with what does that mean? How do you get it? Da-da-da, all that good stuff.

Speaker 1 4:51

Durable power of attorney is one of the most important documents that anybody over the age of 18 should have, right? It's the document that allows you to choose who can make decisions for you regarding your finances, whether it's your property, whether it's your bank account, whether it's somebody filing a lawsuit against you, whether it's your trust. It is that person that you trust that you believe is going to make the best decisions for you. And that person who is chosen basically steps into your shoes and acts like you with regards to all of those things. Now, in the state of Florida, durable powers attorney are very specific. You have to have certain things in your durable power of attorney to allow what we call your agent to be able to do them. So, state of Florida, we used to say that you could do what's called a springing durable power attorney or a general power of attorney that basically said, if and when I become incapacitated, my durable power of attorney goes into effect then. Okay, we no longer can do that. Your durable power attorney goes into effect now the minute you sign it. So you really have to trust the person that you're naming as your agent. I've had a lot of parents that'll say to me, Well, Sally is really good with money, but Joe is not so good. But I feel bad if I don't put both of them on as the durable power attorney. Well, no, that's not how you choose who's your agent, right? You choose the person that is good with your money that you do trust because it does go into effect as soon as you sign it. The other thing is, like I said, you can't do general. You can't say, Oh, my dubo, my agent could do anything that I can do. That's no longer okay anymore. You have to have everything listed in the dubo power of attorney that you want your agent to do. So our dubo powers of attorney went from literally three pages long to the other, like almost 30 pages long because you got to kind of put everything in there because you don't know what's gonna happen for somebody in the future. Um, with my own father, I had a derbal power attorney done, and luckily it was mine that we had him sign, and the bank actually kicked it back and said, you know, it doesn't say on here where you can deal with his IRA. So I had to go searching through the whole document and find the one sentence. Yes, it does, because they were not gonna honor it. So you really have to be careful about making sure that the dubal power attorney has everything in there that you want your agent to be able to do. And then on top of that, the state of Florida has what they call certain special powers that the principal, that's the person who's creating the durable power attorney, has to sign right next to that power to give their agent that ability to do that particular power. For example, one of them is, you know, change beneficiaries. If there's not an initial right next to a paragraph

Common power of attorney mistakes

Speaker 1 7:36

that says my agent can change a beneficiary, then guess what? Your agent can't do it. I will tell you in my practice that probably out of 10 durable powers attorney that I see, I would say maybe, maybe one is done appropriately. And that is because that's the document that a lot of people don't realize how important it is. So they pull it off of you know the website, or they'll talk to their brother's child's best friend who is a criminal defense attorney to do the durable power attorney, or I'll even see some estate lawyers who have done them, and you know, they're older state lawyers and they're and they're even not done correctly. So it's a very powerful tool, and it's one that really should be taken uh you know seriously in in deciding what to do with it.

Speaker 2 8:24

So as you're talking about this, Heidi, this is something that you specifically do for families. Okay, because I'm thinking I need you to redo mine. It's been a while for my mom and for me. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, as you're saying that, I'm like, I wonder when did those laws change?

Speaker 1 8:45

Uh the laws changed in 2000 and I want to say it was either 2011 or 2014. Yep. So I will get some really old ones from people who haven't listened I I mean there are people who do their they do it in their estate plan done and won, one and done. And their documents still talk about, you know, when their children who are now 40 or you know, 14. That's fine. So yeah, it happens a lot. Maybe we're doing this is not just for all of you, it's for us. Um

Why estate planning is not one and done

Speaker 1 9:15

is not one and done. I mean, that you need to be looking at your estate plan, your life changes, and so should your estate plan, so should your durable powers of attorney. Um, you know, I the funny thing is back in my day when I got divorced, um, uh the law had not changed. This law has now changed. So the law had not quite changed yet that if you named your spouse as your agent, that if you got divorced, your spouse was automatically out. So my spouse was my durable power of attorney for quite some time, and I was his because we never changed our documents. So that's you can't do that anymore.

Speaker 2 9:51

But I said hopefully you have a good relationship with him. You know, we do, we do.

Speaker 1 9:57

I mean, I luckily we did, but you know, that has changed. I mean, now if you get divorced, then that power of

Paying for long-term care: where to start

Speaker 1 10:03

attorney goes away. But for a while that was like, uh, oh, ooh. Maybe I don't want my ex-spouse to be my agent. So you gotta be looking at it. Your life changes, you have to look at your document.

Speaker 10:15

Right. So um Tina had shared with me that one of the things, because Tina has an assisted living facility that she is setting up and everything like this, is that many people worry about the money aspect of aging and care, and that, you know, depending, like you said, sometimes this is the first time you're having this conversation with someone and they're looking into the numbers and they're going, like, oh my gosh, how are we gonna make this work? So you focus on that aspect of it. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 10:49

I do. So a big part of my practice is getting individuals qualified for government benefits to help pay for long-term care. Um, depending on if there is a wartime spouse or wartime veteran involved in the planning or not, there's either one or two benefits that help pay for care, whether you're at home in an assisted living or in a nursing home. A lot of people are under the misconception that Medicare pays for long-term care, and it does not. Um, it will pay for some care once you, if you come out of the

The 3 buckets of money for care

Speaker 1 11:19

hospital or rehab, but it does not pay for that long-term custodial care. So, how do you pay for it? I always tell my clients you basically have three buckets of money to pay for care, right? You have your private money, that's the money that they've saved, that's their income. Usually it's usually just social security by that time, maybe RMDs from their required minimum uh from their IRAs, their required minimum distributions from their IRAs, maybe a pension. Um, but usually that's it. They don't have a lot of income based on what their their finances are and their requirements are. So you have that bucket of money that you have to use to pay for care. You then have long-term care policies if you have them. If you don't have them, most of my clients, by the time they come to me, are not capable to get them. Um, if you do have them, I always say it's it's something to keep. I mean, it's a it's it's a great benefit to have. Um, and then you have your government benefit bucket. Now, what the government wants you to do is spend down all of your first two buckets down to their requirements, and then come and tap into the government benefits after that. The problem with that is a couple of things. One, the government benefit does not pay for everything, no matter what. It won't pay for every single thing. There's no free lunch here. Um, number two, getting the government benefits is also a time-consuming process. You can't get anything tomorrow. It doesn't work that way. So you want to make sure that you're setting up your protecting your first bucket, you're protecting your second bucket, and being able to tap into the government benefit bucket before you run out of money, before you run out of your first

VA aid and attendance benefits explained

Speaker 1 12:50

two buckets. And that's what we do. We help people basically um, you know, transfer assets out of their names over to children or family members or even friends in order to allow them to qualify for that first government for the benefit that has the government benefits, so that they can now stretch out their private money. Now, the government benefits that I'm talking about are two. Again, if there's a wartime veteran or surviving spouse of a wartime veteran that hasn't been married, remarried, or divorced, there's a benefit under the VA called aid and attendance benefit. It is not a service-connected benefit. It is a benefit for a wartime veteran or their surviving spouse who is in need of care because of what we call their activities of daily living, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, andor eating, or they have memory issues. And basically, what it is, it's a tax-free dollar that gets paid directly to the veteran or the surviving spouse in order to allow them to be able to pay for additional care. So it could be anywhere from almost $3,900 a month down to about $1,500 a month for a surviving spouse. So it's a very important benefit if you are a wartime veteran or surviving spouse. Now, a lot of misconceptions on that is oh, he didn't have boots on the ground. He does not need to have boots on the ground, he just needs to have served during an eligible wartime. Um, he does not need

Medicaid for long-term care explained

Speaker 1 14:15

to have gotten injured during the wartime. He has to be discharged any way other than dishonorably. Um, and like I said, it's a doctor-driven program, so he medically needs he or the surviving spouse medically need to have services. So there is an income and asset limit, but most people will qualify for that. So the other issue, the other government benefit is you're talking about is Medicaid. Medicaid has many, many different programs under it, right? Medicaid has a huge umbrella of different services. You've got food stamps, you've got housing. I have a son with special needs, he has Medicaid insurance. That's not what I'm talking about. Medicaid has two specific programs that help individual pay for long-term care, whether they're at home, in an assisted living facility, or in a skilled nursing facility. And depending on where you live, depends on what program you apply for and what benefit you get. If somebody is residing at home, they can get services in the home, home health care, meals, transportation, day programs. Um, it doesn't pay for 24-7, I'll be honest. Um, but it does pay for some home health care. And if you've got a wartime veteran or surviving spouse, they can get aid in attendance and Medicaid at the same time. So that could be a big savings in a home, or in an assisted living facility, it'll pay for the service portion of the bill. So that's that level of care. And then once again, if you have a wartime veteran or

Nursing home costs and why planning matters

Speaker 1 15:37

surviving spouse, they can get the aid in attendance to help pay for the room and board. And then that is called the home and community-based waiver program under Medicaid. If you are in a skilled nursing facility or a nursing home, it's like actually one of the most significantly financially programmed ever because it pays the entire cost of a nursing home for a shared room minus the individual's gross monthly income. And I don't know if you know this, but going into a nursing home can cost anywhere from about $10,000 to $15,000 a month for a shared room. So if you're getting social security at $2,500 a month and you got a shower a month, you're gonna run through money quickly. So if you get qualified for Medicaid and it reduces that cost down to just your income, and you're able to protect some of your savings by doing proper planning, then you set yourself up for getting better care.

Speaker 2 16:29

Absolutely. And I find a lot of people that I talk to, they have just not planned ahead. And on top of that, they um they are eligible for some of these benefits and they're not applying for them because they have no idea. So hopefully, if we have some great veterans on this, you know, podcast, I pray that they reach out to you or to whoever is in their state. Um, and Heidi, is there somewhere do you have like referrals out to other states? Because I know you practice in Florida, but um okay, perfect. So when we put the

What if your parent has too much money to qualify

Speaker 2 17:06

information down below, just reach out to Heidi and then she can refer you to someone in another state if you're listening from another state, because it's so important to get those benefits for you know, you just don't know how long, and nowadays people are living longer, so you might have planned for 20 years, but now it could be 40 years, and that money goes really fast. And so I'm just go ahead, go ahead, Tia.

Speaker 17:31

Sorry.

Speaker 2 17:31

Well, I was gonna say, and then unfortunately, the care is just really not the quality of care you want for your parent, and so that just helps so much to prepare. Go ahead, Melanie.

Speaker 17:43

I was gonna say, like, uh, if you had to say to an individual, um, what kind of uh money should they be putting aside? Is there and like is there a way to shelter that money so that they can then take advantage of these you know government programs? But uh, you know, uh if you're making too much money, if you're making too much money, if your parents made too much money, I mean, like, how do you even like know what you may or may not be able to qualify for? Because there are probably people who are like, wow, I had no idea, but do they qualify?

Speaker 1 18:17

Right. So basically, the the requirement for so let me just go for the aid in attendance is a federal requirement, right? So that's federally across the state, everybody has to qualify with the same amount right now. So say it to say it again, the aid in attendance? Aid in attendance under the VA. That's for your wartime veterans and your surviving spouses, and the requirements are the same across the nation because it's under the Department of Um Veteran Affairs. Medicaid, on the other hand, is a federally funded program, state run. So each state has its own rules and regulations. So in Florida, in order to qualify for Medicaid, and every time I tell this to people, they just drop out of their chairs and they're like, well, never qualify. Um, you can have no more than $2,000 worth of assets in your name for an individual. Um, your income cannot be any more than $2,982. That goes up every year. You it does exclude your house per month. You're talking about your $2,982 per month, right? But $2,000 in total assets, excluding your house, excluding your car, excluding prepaid burials that are irrevocable, and you can also get your IRAs excluded with proper planning. So, and if you have a spouse who is healthy, then it's a then the healthy spouse can have approximately $163,000 in assets. So most people are gonna hear that, and the first thing they're gonna say is, Well, I don't qualify, and that's it. They're gonna shut the door on it and they're never gonna think about it again. That is what we are here to tell you is that there are planning strategies that you can use to be able to qualify for those benefits, whether you do it in a pre-plan with an irrevocable trust, or you do it in a crisis plan with crisis planning that we're able to use to get dollars out of your name over to family members or even to your spouse in order to get you qualified for the benefit. So don't just walk away and think, oh, I'll never

Why VA accreditation and direct system access matter

Speaker 1 20:17

qualify for that without speaking to somebody who really knows this world.

Speaker 2 20:24

So, Heidi, one of the things that was very interesting to me, um, and I'd love for you to share a little bit about the veterans um program that you are involved, you actually are directly connected into their system because I know from experience we have applied, I think three times now for my mother for that benefit, and have yet to get any response. And I know part of it was timing, and one of the times we you know submitted it, it went during you know the government shutdown, what have you. But talk a little bit about that because I do think that that sets you apart. And when they're when they're looking for someone to help them, like that's a big deal that they can go direct and they can actually have you submit it through the portal or something to that effect. Can you share a little bit about that? Sure.

Speaker 1 21:12

So, in order to do VA benefits, you have to be VA accredited. So I am a VA accredited attorney, and that's where a lot of attorneys stop. They say, Okay, I'm VA accredited, I can go ahead and submit applications on behalf of people, I can do VA planning and stuff. I actually took an extra step and did additional training and got myself access to what's called the veteran benefit management system. That is their actual online system. So when we submit our applications, and I have a company called Veteran Aid and Planning Services that is nationwide. Um, when we submit our applications, we have, because of my access, direct access to the veteran system. So I see all of my Applications in real time. So for example, we had submitted an application that was missing a date. It's very easy to do because there's a lot of documents that you have to fill out and sign, and you know, the veteran has to sign. So they had missed a date. Well, when I went on the very next day and saw missing date, I was able to send it immediately to my veteran. We got the date submitted, you know, we fixed the date, we submitted it again, and the process started immediately. And he got his benefits within a month.

Is it ever too late to apply for benefits

Speaker 1 22:28

If you can believe this, he was approved for his benefits before we got the letter telling us that there was a problem with the date. So had I not had that actual access, he would have had to wait another three or four, possibly either another couple of months, because we would have had to then turn around after we got the letter, submitted the application again, waited in the black hole, not knowing what was happening, until he got approval. So yeah, I'm very proud of the fact that I did that. I have to do training every year, you know, through the VA. Um, I have a special card because of it. So it does make our application process a lot easier and a lot quicker. And we're able to really submit in real time. And it's it's been a lifesaver. I mean, I practiced for many years without it, not even knowing that it existed. And when I found out it did, I I did go those extra steps and took that 19 hours of so I'm curious.

Speaker 23:32

Yeah, I'm I'm curious because like my mom's 92. She's living in an assisted living, uh, independent living, actually, right now. And my dad's past, but he did serve in the military. Is it too late? Is it ever too late to check into that sort of thing? Okay.

Speaker 1 23:50

It is never too late. And here's the thing that you should know, Melinda. It used to be prior to 2018, if your mom lived in an independent, but she still needed, you know, assistance with her activities of daily living, you know, bathing, dressing, toileting, and transferring, or just have memory issues, and she was in an independent, you could not qualify her for aid in attendance benefits.

Speaker 24:13

Okay.

Speaker 1 24:13

Because one of the big parts of that is that your income, your gross monthly income, has to be outweighed by what we consider unreimbursed medical expenses. And people who live in independent facilities, the cost of the independent facility was not considered an unreimbursed medical expense. Where if you are in an assisted living facility, it is. In 2018, the department or the VA changed those laws. So now, with proper documents from the doctor, you can actually classify the independent living facility as an unreimbursed medical expense and be able to get your mom qualified for those benefits as long as the doctor says that she still needs assistance or she needs to be in that facility because of her health.

Speaker 25:04

Okay.

Speaker 1 25:05

So that's a big thing. Now, the only time I would ever tell you that it is too late to qualify or to apply for the VA, the VA benefit is if somebody's basically, I hate to say it, but on death door, because you have to be alive at the time of approval in order to get the benefits. So and it does take three months. It does go, it does pay retroactive, it does. Um again, if you uh if we apply and you die before the the VA approves it, then the benefit, you don't get the benefit, the family does not get the benefit.

Speaker 25:42

Okay. So um another complication I think that happens is with families. I think Tina alluded to it. Um that if the parents haven't planned as well, and then the kids have to step in and take, you know, the financial burden

When adult children have to help pay

Speaker 25:58

of making sure that their parents are taken care of. How does that enter into what you do? And how do you count counsel families that have very, very differing financial backgrounds and the ability to support their family member?

Speaker 1 26:13

You know, I see that a lot. I will see, oh, um, usually what I'll see is the one, the family member that has a lot of money is contributing financially. And then it's the family member who doesn't have a lot of money that's doing all the grunt work, right? I do see that a lot. Um, but regardless of whether a family member has a lot of money or has a little bit of money or whatever, most people aren't overly excited, and I hate to say it this way, to have to pay for long-term care for their parents, right? They're dealing with their own families, they're dealing with their own children, they're dealing with their own lives, they're afraid of their own long-term care. So, no matter how much money you have, a lot of them are still concerned about it. So, luckily, their money doesn't come into play when you're talking about getting their parents qualified for the benefits. So, if we can alleviate some of that cost, now I won't tell you that there's that with the government benefits, there's still not some financial um process that the or financial requirement that the family member might have to put in, but they sure do like it when you're able to cut it down for them, right? So that's the big piece of that. But unfortunately, it happens. I see it all the time that children are taking care of their parents. And, you know, I'm not faulting the parents because when they were my age, they didn't first of all expect to live as long as we're living, and they saved what they thought they was good, they were gonna save to be able to have the you know the golden years. Can't tell you how many times people have said to me, where the world are the golden years? Because right now, the golden years, they're gone.

Speaker 27:55

They're not even so they're not golden.

Speaker 1 27:58

They're not the only golden right now, are they? They're not they're not very golden. So um, you know, and and unfortunately, when I do have clients, I have had family members who say to me, you know, my parents are running out of money, we can't afford anything. What can we do? And

Nursing home vs assisted living

Speaker 1 28:15

at that point, if they've already gotten tapped into the benefits and they've already run out of their parents' savings because they've protected assets by again transferring them out of the parents' name and getting them those benefits sooner rather than having them spend down all of their parents' money, a lot of times the only ultimate ult ult alternative is a nursing home. Because that's the only place you can really go and just get on Medicaid and just have to pay your income.

Speaker 28:40

So when you say nursing home versus Tina assisted living, you're like, what's the difference? I mean, I'm I'm feeling I get to ask the dumb questions because you know well, you know, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 28:51

So a nursing home is where there's actual medical nursing care being provided, and then it goes into a whole different bucket from Medicaid. So, for instance, to give you perspective, a memory care here locally charges about $16,000 a month for memory care because they're a nursing home, but that's a semi-private, like because their memory care is on a nursing home. So that's but they accept Medicaid and that's covered by Medicaid. Whereas with um an assisted living, Medicaid doesn't only covers a certain portion of it because there's no nursing or medical care being provided.

Speaker 1 29:33

So it's a different I always say like your nursing homes is like your hospital, right? They are in one room, they're in a hospital, they're usually in a hospital bed. Um, it's usually not private. There's two people in a hospital room, they have 24-hour care, supposedly. They need 24, they need more skilled care. So it's not just, you know, they need more of their skilled medical care. Your assisted living facilities can be an apartment, it could be a one-bedroom, a studio, a two-bedroom. Sometimes it's just their own bedroom. There can even be a shared bedroom, but it's more of an apartment living where the care comes when you need it. It's not 24-7. They don't normally have nurses on 24-7. Now, the confusing part that's happened in Florida is that you now have your assisted living facilities that are, like Tina said, calling themselves memory units. And they do have a little bit higher of a license. So they'll tell people they can keep them till death do they part, they'll keep them whatever, but a lot of times at the end, they're bringing in hospice. Also, a lot of those memory units are what we consider locked in because a lot of people with dementia tend to wander, right? Because they're always looking for their home. Their home is not where they're living right now, their home might be what they remember in their childhood. So they tend to walk out the doors. I mean, that's a big issue with people who have memory issues. So when you put them in a memory unit, they are locked in. But it still might be their own bedroom or their own apartment. So that's really the difference when you're talking about nursing homes. And Tina's right, the cost of a nursing home can run anywhere from, you know, $16,000. Um, and but an assisted living is usually in the range now of about $5,500 to $7,500 a month. And Medicaid will pay in a nursing home under what's called the institutionalized care program, pay for the entire cost of that nursing home minus the individual's gross monthly income. They still have to pay their income to the facility, but that's all they have to pay, minus $160 they're permitted to keep as a personal allowance. Whereas if you're in an assisted living facility, number one, you have to go into an assisted living facility that accepts Medicaid, which people get freaked out about, but there are some beautiful ones that do. It's not it's not like a Medicaid place. Um and once they're in there, what Medicaid pays for is the level of care, not that room and board. And most nursing homes in the state of Florida do accept Medicaid. There's very few that don't, but there are some that don't, but most of them do.

Speaker 2 32:06

Well, and in the assisted living homes, um, you know, some of the numbers that I've been quoted, we don't we're a private pay, so it doesn't affect us. But a lot of the assisted living homes that do accept Medicaid, they're they're saying like $1,800 a person is all there. $2,100 is supposed to have $2,100 now. So that that difference between the $5,500 to $7,500 that still comes out of the family's pocket. So that's why it's so important to meet with Heidi. So that you can get that care and still have the exceptional care. Because some of those facilities, too, unfortunately, a lot of them will have 20 to 30 residents that a caregiver is taking care of. And so you're not getting individual care, like our ratios are four to six per resident because it's very you know personalized. So there's a lot to consider, and we're so glad, Heidi, to have you today and to share. And we're gonna share all of your information down below. And if you're listening to this podcast today, ladies and gentlemen, I asked, put your question down below. Like, what was that thing that you learned today from Heidi? And what are your questions? Would love to hear from you. Any other questions you might have that we can create a podcast? We'll have Heidi back and she'll share some more of her expertise. If you have more questions, we'd love to connect you as well. So and subscribe and subscribe. Subscribe. Yes, definitely subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.

Speaker 33:37

Can we can we end with a quick little uh thank you? Absolutely.

Speaker 2 33:43

Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for just being here with us, and for every family member that's listening, just give them peace, give them joy, and just be with each one of us as we go today. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Speaker 33:56

Amen. Thank you.

Speaker 2 33:59

Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. What a pleasure. So join us, pull up the chair, stronger senior time.

Speaker 3 34:10

We laugh, we love, we share, we laugh so we don't cry. Join us.