Seniors Not Ready For Long-Term Healthcare Needs
A new study claims seniors are not worried about the one person's healthcare they should be most concerned for: their own.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research analyzed the current long term healthcare policies to decide how many seniors will be medically covered long after retirement.
According to researchers, by 2030 19 percent of the US population will be over the age of 65. The US Department of Health and Human Services states that around 70 percent of Americans over the age of 65 will require long-term medical care for at least three years.
"The rapidly aging population brings with it important social and public policy questions about preparing for and providing quality long-term care," said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center.
"This survey establishes what Americans 40 and over understand about the need for long-term care and reveals troubling facts about what is being done to prepare for it."
Tompson and his colleagues issued surveys to 1,019 adults who were over the age of 40 in order to gauge their perception of long-term healthcare.
Shedding light on why older adults tend to not care about future health needs, researchers found that close to one-third of seniors were more worried about losing independence than actually getting older.
Their analysis of aging adults revealed that around 35 percent of seniors have saved money for future medical costs and only 41 percent have expressed actual concern for long-term healthcare with their family.
Instead of the actual cost of healthcare, seniors are more apprehensive about burdening their family, losing mental and physical abilities, debts they have already accrued and being isolated from friends and family.
However, seniors do feel they can turn to their families for support when the time comes. Around 68 percent of survey respondents were confident their family would help them out with all of their needs and at least 15 percent said they could rely on their family for modest requests.
The AP-NORC study was funded by the SCAN foundation, a non-profit program that aids research geared towards improving healthcare standards for the elderly.