The Medicare Myth That Breaks Families with Eric Sailor & Ryan Buck — Full Episode Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Caregivers Compass. Joining me today is Eric Saylor and Ryan Bulk. Eric is a certified senior advisor and senior care entrepreneur who is deeply committed to helping families navigate complex aging and healthcare decisions. Eric co-owns Care Patrol of Northeast Ohio with Ryan and is co-founder of Aging Advocacy and Care Management, bringing hands-on advocacy and clarity to families at critical moments.

Also, we're here with Ryan Buck. He's a senior care leader with a background in business and banking who's passionate about improving the caregiving journey. Ryan and Eric, as I said, own Care Patrol together and co-founded a care management practice where they're both focused on helping families age at home and navigate Medicaid with confidence. Together, they're serving families and helping them find the most perfect care.

And they also serve as part of our care concierge team at LT CareNav, supporting families with trusted guidance, practical solutions, and truly human approach to long-term care planning. So welcome, Eric and Ryan.

Thank you. Thanks for having us, Lindsay.

Morning.

So for full disclosure, everybody, Eric and Ryan are friends. So that was weird to an introduction like that, but they are amazing and they have so much knowledge that they're going to share with you. So let's just like jump right in. We all know that like senior care, understanding long-term care is really complex and most people don't understand what options they have until they're suddenly in it. Everybody kind of waits for a crisis moment, right? So what is...

You

Yep.

the most common misconception you hear when families first call you, especially when they're in crisis.

Yeah, it's a great question. I know Ryan will have some insight as well on this. I think the one that I always come back to is people assume that a form of insurance is going to pay for this and for most people that's an assumption about Medicare or Medicaid paying for the care.

and they don't realize actually how expensive it is and there's limitations to that. I don't know Ryan, if you feel the same way when you talk to families.

Hmm.

Yeah, agreed. We get the question very, very often, probably. every second or third family that we work with and help. You know, so what does Medicare pay when my mom needs to go into assisted living or a nursing home or some sort of long-term care? I always hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the reality is that we say they don't really pay for anything when it comes to your rent and your care and assisted living. will pay for your doctor visits, physical therapy, occupational therapy, you know, some insurance based things, but it's not paying for long-term care, right? That is going to be mostly out of pocket and it really stinks to have to tell people that but it but it is the reality.

So one of the things I hear people misconstrue a lot is that long-term care is healthcare, right? There's like a misconception that those two things are the same. Can you explain what the difference is? Where does healthcare stop and long-term care begin?

So it's really, they do work in some ways hand in hand, right? So healthcare, right, is your doctor's visits. It's when you go to the hospital, it's your physical, it's your occupational therapy. It's anything having to do with your physical needs, right? But long-term care isn't going to address, I got a question for you. Sorry, Lindsey.

You're good.

When we go through this, there going to be, can you edit things as we go through this? I apologize. I should have asked that before. Okay, so can you go back and ask that question again? I'm sorry. Okay, okay.

Yeah, we can edit it.

Absolutely. people who are editing, top that up, Okay.

got down a rabbit hole that I was like, I'm gonna over explain this and it's gonna be too much. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking and I'm like, I'm going down a rabbit hole here. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I was more thinking like getting ADLs, like that's where people get back.

Okay. So you had mentioned that Medicare covers certain expenses like health care. And can you explain to everybody where that difference between health care and long-term care is?

Yeah, so with the healthcare side of things, right? Kind of as we explained, healthcare is going to pay for your doctor's visits. It's going to pay for maybe a skilled nursing stay temporarily at a nursing home or skilled nursing facility. It's going to pay for physical therapy, occupational therapy. those type of medical needs. What it's not going to pay for is your activities of daily living that occur within a facility, right? That is still out of pocket. So while that is medical care in that sense, that is not something that Medicare or any type of insurance is going to pay for once you enter a facility, assisted living, nursing home, any type of long-term care. That is again going to be out of pocket, which is again something that we have to explain to Yes, it's medical care, but it's not going to be covered by your insurance.

Yeah, I think an important fact with that too is that there's a lot of misconceptions out there about the length of payment when you're under a Medicare covered situation. we work with a lot of hospitals, right? And it's not uncommon that somebody is discharging out of a hospital and the family feels that it was sudden because they didn't realize, well, this person can't really stay at the hospital, right? Once they've been treated, they have to be discharged into a different situation. Oftentimes, Medicare insurance then approves them for a therapy stay for occupational, physical, speech, so on, at a skilled nursing facility. And there's a lot of misconceptions out there that, well, once they're at the skilled nursing facility, they get 100 days, right, with Medicare. The reality is that's generally what somebody gets in a calendar year to use as their skilled time. So typically what we see as a national average is actually about 21 days.

Hmm.

So essentially they've gone there and through the regulations of insurance, through the reporting about their progress or lack thereof, the insurance carrier through Medicare is actually driving the length of stay under the skilled rehab. And that comes as a surprise to a lot of families when that stay is over. It's only, you know, a couple of weeks versus months as they anticipated. And now they're being told, well, your loved one needs care.

Hmm.

if they're going to go back home or can't go back home, they should really be going into a long-term care type setting. So that actually gets a lot of people as well because of the generalization around Medicare.

So, and that has to be a really challenging moment for people, right? You're already scurrying and then you find out that it's not gonna be covered. So let's just use a hypothetical. I'm coming to you, my mom is been in rehab for the X amount of days. telling me she needs long-term care. No long-term care insurance, nothing in place for this. She has a home, but she doesn't have a lot of money.

Ahem.

you know, all, most people are wearing this like a Medicaid spend down. What would you advise somebody who's coming and say they have $100,000 in the bank and they're looking to kind of go into assisted living? Can they get right onto Medicaid? What does that look like? Or do they have to spend down that money?

It's a great question. reality, there's some variables there depending on the situation. So the short answer is most people think it's easy to get on Medicaid and it's really not. Medicaid does have restrictions in place that are state by state regulations. And part of those restrictions are there is an asset limit that you are capped at. There is an income limit that you are capped at. And there is a look back period where essentially Medicaid is allowed to look back for five years on your assets and what you did with those assets, right? So easy example with that is, you know, grandma gave away $10,000 last year to each of her five grandkids, and now she wants to go on Medicaid. That can present a problem for that family under the gifting rules of Medicaid. And I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole because it's very unique for each person's situation. But in the analogy that you gave, Lindsay, potentially, yes, that person may be able to go on to Medicaid if certain parameters are met. So, for example, there is a parameter called the community spouse. If that person has a spouse living in the home, then the home can essentially be ignored as an asset for the time being, and that person could potentially go ahead and file for Medicaid and get approved, assuming they meet the income threshold. That would be a factor of it, okay? they don't have any other investment accounts at all which could be cash value for life insurance policy IRAs 401k stocks bonds trusts so on so it gets complicated really quick with families but it is very individualized answers based on their scenario so qualified yes the person could get on medicaid or no maybe they have a hundred thousand dollars let's just say this is a single individual they have a house they have a hundred thousand dollars

Hmm?

that hundred thousand dollars is going to have to be dealt with before Medicaid allows them to come out to their program. And in most situations, that does mean a spend down. But it also depends on what care community setting they're going into. If you're going into a nursing home traditionally, there are some trusts that exist that an attorney could essentially put that money into, pay a penalty, but the penalty cost is less than spending down the whole hundred thousand dollars. That might be clear as mud to everybody because Medicaid is complex and that's why it's important to have somebody who understands the programs and the regulations before you make a decision on a long-term care facility for your loved one.

You

Mm-hmm.

And beyond nursing homes, because I think that kind of has a more straightforward path. think a lot of people really want to start in assisted livings, right? It's more of a community. Do assisted livings take Medicaid? What does that look like? Is it a state by state kind of basis of that?

Yeah, it actually is. So Medicaid is funded by the state and by the federal government, but each state has their requirements. We are very fortunate here in the state of Ohio that we have a really robust, what we call Medicaid waiver program. So somebody that is needing to go on Medicaid can do that in assisted living. A facility is not required to accept Medicaid. So you could go to one place right down the road, right? They don't accept Medicaid, but the place five miles, five minutes away could may Medicaid and they also have their own requirements for as Eric mentioned the spend down right you have X amount of money you need to spend that down until they'll accept you on that waiver program there are some facilities that will take it right from the beginning without any private pay funds being thrown into that and then some may say we want you know two or three years worth of finances to make sure that when you go on Medicaid you can stay here so in assisted living it is a really nice program. They are also required to give you your own little apartment with your own bathroom. So it may be even a studio apartment, but you'll never have a roommate, which is really a very wonderful thing about our waiver program in a nursing home. They are only paid for the semi-private room rate from Medicaid. So that's not to that you will have a roommate in a nursing home, but the requirement is that you can. And so that's one of the nice things about the waiver program here in the state of Ohio is that you will always have your own apartment if you go on that program. But again, it's all dependent upon the state. We were just in Missouri and correct me if I'm wrong on this Eric, I don't believe they have a waiver program there. So everybody there goes into a nursing home. So again, each state has their own requirement for that.

And you just like spun off like six questions in my head. So we'll start with this one. So yeah, you're saying Medicaid waiver program versus Medicaid. And you're saying some states have them and some states don't. What is a Medicaid waiver program? Is there a separate application to do that?

boy.

Yeah, so that's a good clarification spot because you can be on Medicaid for your healthcare purposes, doctor's visits, right? Prescription drugs, those sorts of things. That doesn't automatically qualify you for long-term care like we're talking about. So if you need to go into a nursing home, that's a form of a Medicaid waiver. If you want in-home care coming into your house and you qualify under their parameter, That's a form of a Medicaid waiver and there's some variables even there based on who your Medicaid Insurance carrier is right is it Humana is United Health Care? Is it Buckeye so on and then to what Ryan's been speaking about we have a program here that's called the Medicaid assisted living waiver and that's specifically if you are going into assisted living and you need Medicaid part of that waiver is a nursing assessor

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

that is done by the state organization who is approved to do those and they come out and actually assess you to make sure you have medical needs that qualify for going on that waiver. And then the community, assisted living community, they generally do their own assessments while reviewing history and physical paperwork from the potential resident's primary physician to basically say, you're medically approved to come into our community. And then the final phase, which is actually the hardest, is the financial phase. So when you go to get on that waiver for assisted living, that's when you start getting at all those financial things like spend down, asset transfers, income, those sorts of things.

It is there's there's a lot to this right? But one of the things you did mention Ryan is that the Medicaid waiver program for assisted livings is your own bathroom with your room right? What about memory care because a lot of memory cares don't have more of a communal shower just for safety reasons. Not qualify then?

Mm-hmm.

Correct.

Mm-hmm. If you do not have a shower in your little apartment, even in memory care, that memory care facility is not licensed to be able to the waiver. And that is one of the pitfalls. One of the issues, I think, with that side of things is that it is very expensive to take care of somebody that is in memory care. So many of the facilities just don't accept the waiver in memory care. Now, not all of them. I don't want to make that blanket statement. But most of them either can't because of that particular reason or just because the reimbursement is just so much less than what a private pay cost would be that memory care. is very difficult for a spend down or coming in right off of that waiver program that Eric referred to.

Wow, that must be really hard when you get a family who definitely needs memory care and there are no options. So this is gonna be challenging question and just, think families need to hear this. What do do if that comes in and there is no money left to self pay and mom needs memory care? What's the options?

Hmm.

Yeah.

Generally speaking, sorry Eric, I'll let you talk too, but generally speaking in that case, we are having to probably navigate that family into more of a skilled nursing home type of setting. We're fortunate here, we work with a lot of great ones, so we can take that family and say here's two or three really good nursing homes. But again, generally speaking, if there's no available apartments that take the waiver, that's kind of what you're doing at that point. point.

Yeah, just to add to that, sometimes they're are situations where you might be able to find a way to make that work. we have had families in the past that have been willing to, between siblings, split up the cost to help mom get into a assisted living type of memory care. There's also some VA benefits that are out there that we ask every family about as well, which can be pretty sizable. Upwards of $2,000 to almost $3,000 a month that VA pays towards the care. So sometimes between that years income, maybe there's no assets, but pension social security, if you get a VA benefit, if the kids maybe can each chip in a little bit, there may be an option to get them somewhere that is a more assisted living style memory care. But to Ryan's point, if those things are off the table, then you're looking at basically going straight on Medicaid for a nursing home and you're trying to find a decently rated Medicare, Medicare rated facility for that family to take care of their loved one.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it really is challenging and it kind of brings it to a totally different topic. You probably see that a lot with families who don't have a plan. Is it the majority of the families you see?

Yeah, most of the families that we get through our marketing business development efforts, referral programs that we have, most families are not ready for this aspect of their life, of their loved ones life. We do not as a country, from what I've seen over almost 10 years, we don't do a very good job of teaching people how to. age into this process and what happens when you actually need care. is we don't do a good job of it. We really don't. And it's amazing. Again, we talked about, you know, families calling and saying, well, what's Medicare going to cover? Well, it's not going to cover anything. And oftentimes we're the bearer of bad news. And, you know, it's funny, as we're going through this, this talk, this podcast, I'm thinking to myself, how are families navigating this process? We've talked now for nearly 20 minutes about all of these different aspects of of what long-term care is, what it isn't, what's covered, what's not covered. And I've been doing this almost 10, Eric's been doing this almost eight, and it rolls off our tongues because we've been doing it for so long. But when you think about a family not knowing and not having any education, and then you say, what's covered and what's not, can you imagine them going through this process by themselves and not having any education around this? It's very, very difficult to navigate this process by yourself. It's not easy. There's not a lot of education out there, unfortunately.

I think too it's important to understand that most families fall within three categories. Category one, I got nothing. It's just my monthly income. What do I do? Okay, we've got to get you on Medicaid right away. We're going to need to find a community for you, right? Category two, I have some money, but I likely am going to outlive my funds. What happens when that takes place? Category three, I'm not worried about it. We've prepared. We have long-term care insurance. We were ready for this. I can go anywhere I want. Money's not the driver, right?

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The latter. The third group is more rare to Ryan's point of what we see on a regular basis. Realistically, the group that's in number two is the most common group we get where there's a little bit of money my mom and dad have saved up. There's maybe a house that can be sold, but there's two people who may be needing care. That's going to cost X dollars per month. Easy math, right? We can do that math and say, well, it's going to run out in four years. What happens then? So that's where

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

having somebody that can understand the client's needs now, but also what happens down the road and can talk to those families about, we have some properties that do Medicaid waiver so that when your funds run out, you could go on to that and Medicaid starts footing the bill.

you

And then we also look at the age and condition of that resident, right? Somebody who theoretically is in their 90s and has several health conditions, they're probably not worried about their money running out in six or seven years. That's not what the forefront of their mind, right? Versus somebody who's in their early 80s maybe, and that is on their mind, right? They're expecting to live past those four or five years maybe. So that's where understanding the communities that work with the AFL

Mm-hmm.

a waiver program, knowing what their requirements are for private pay before you can go on waiver, guiding the family into what does it take to get onto waiver and how do we do that? What do we need to prepare for now is really important. And what's interesting that comes out of this so many times is oftentimes we're teaming up with the senior who needs care, but also the adult children who.

Mm-hmm.

are looking out for them, right? That's generally who it falls on. And we all have experienced that probably or know somebody who has. What's interesting to me is a lot of times those adult children will come back and say, I had no idea this is how this worked and this is what it costs. What do I have to do to make sure that I'm ready? Because I don't want to be in the situation like my parents are.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Do you think we're going to look at a generation that's more prepared, especially after the next five or 10 years of like the baby boomers getting older and us having to take care of our parents? Do think it's going to change our mind frame or like frame of mind around this and we might actually start to prepare?

I- I really have hope for that. We are in the age of information. It's at our disposal. It's funny, when you think about almost anything, a restaurant, a vacation, a consumer product, most of us turn to a search engine of some form, AI or just a regular search engine to say, tell me about this, right? I think we're getting there with the age of information for people as well around.

Mm-hmm.

this and you you brought it up in the beginning but being able to get people to see the value for example in products like long-term care nav where you can go in and be educated about costs about estimated time frames people spend in a long-term care setting about how to plan and prepare around Medicaid and financially be ready for this and have tools that you're the driver of that you're

Hmm.

able to look out that 10, 15, 20 year forecast and say, OK, I know what's coming. I know what I need to do to be prepared. My hope is that people actually use it then. It's one thing to have the tool in your toolbox, but if you never take it out, it's not serving its purpose. It's not doing the good that it's intended to do for you. I really think that with the age of information, I'm hopeful that up and coming generations are seeing the cost of care that it

Mm-hmm.

expensive, it does require planning, but there's a way to be ready for it and if you plan properly it actually doesn't have to be this monumental thing that needs to be tackled at the last minute.

Mmm.

Yeah.

And I think options come, right? Like when you have the financial media pools, I'm assuming that you guys see a lot more options, better communities are available, that kind of great thing. And with the cost of care being so high, even when you are prepared, you might run out of money, right? So when do you suggest starting to think about Medicaid? Because most people do this crisis mode. But if you are not in crisis mode and you know that it might come in time, where's a good time to start planning for Medicaid?

Mm-hmm.

Ooh, that's a really good question. Before you need care would be the answer that's probably the best answer. Because once you start to need care and you need a pot of money, and that money is available to you, but you have a five-year look back. And again, I don't want to go into all that all over again.

Thank

But the reality is that with anything preparation is key, right? So why do we, you know, if you're an athlete, why do you work out so hard to prepare, right? It's the same thing with this long-term care side of things. Like you need to prepare before you actually need care. Because once you need care, that money can go by really, really quickly. think Eric is working with somebody right now that it's costing them $1,000 a day to be in a nursing home. Think about that, if that person has half a million dollars, that money is gone in a little over a year, that person probably would have never considered that ever being an issue, right? But if it costs $1,000 a day to be in a facility, that money is gone like that. What if you could have prepared for Medicaid three years before, and maybe some of that money that you've set aside is used for care so you can do a nice facility, but you can get on Medicaid a little bit sooner? So I know that's a very holistic answer, the answer truly is before you actually need care is when you need to start plan for what happens if I run out of money.

Yeah, I think also to understanding that while we do have the Medicaid program, that's not the only way to prepare and pay for your care. And frankly, it may not be the route that you want to take. looking at products that are out there, talking with your financial planner, to me, There's probably no wrong time to look at this. Now I understand if you're 25 years old and you're trying to get a job out of college, that's not what's on your mind. that being the side, I'm going to say if you have aging parents where you've started to notice things changing, that should be the time you're having a conversation with them about what is your guys' plan for long-term care? Have you guys done anything? If you're in your, I'm going to say mid-40s to early 50s, somebody might correct me

you

Mm-hmm.

that you should be talking to your financial planner about, we've been looking at my retirement and what we do for my kids and what we do when we retire. What do we have in place if one of us suddenly has a heart attack or stroke and all of a sudden we need long-term care? What does that look like? Are we paying that out of our 401k? Is there an annuity we can buy into? Is there a long-term care insurance policy we should be looking at? Should we be adding a rider to our life

Yep.

insurance that can help pay for this. Those are conversations that to me really should be happening at that time. And you may be somebody who says, I don't ever see myself really needing Medicaid or wanting a Medicaid facility. So how do I avoid that? It's very much the same type of conversation. Where are the funds protected at? What are they allocated for? Is there enough if both of us all of a sudden started needing care? You know, what's the difference if I look at staying home versus going to a community and bringing home caregivers in, right? Those are conversations that you should be having to me if you're probably in that range of ages. And certainly if you have aging parents, you should be having the conversation with them about what their plan is because that's what hurts the most that we see is these families call and they just they weren't aware. No one ever told them they don't know what they don't know. And now they're trying to digest all this and navigate it.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Usually in a health crisis right mom did have a fall when is in the hospital dad did have a stroke and is in rehab now and now what was normal life and everything going well has been disrupted and there's this giant Financial elephant in the room about how the money's allocated what's going to be used to pay for what and so on

And to piggyback off of that too, sadly we're seeing people that need placement in their 60s and 70s. And so if you wait till you're in your early 60s to make this decision of I'm going to go and try to find some type of program to pay for long-term care. it may be too late. And that's one of the saddest parts of this job is having to work with somebody that's in their 30s and 40s helping find care for their mom or their dad who's 65 but needs help. So to Eric's point, that's a good timeframe to look at because people are needing care earlier and earlier and it's really sad.

And do you see in the future with this care being needed earlier with longevity changing and increasing so drastically, what do you see the like the care even looking like? Do you think we're going to even have enough people in communities to care for people?

Boy, boy. Now we're going to be off on a topic. I guess, again, the short answer is probably not. We're probably not going to have enough people that are in our industry providing hands-on care for all the need that's going to be out there.

Should we save it for another one?

How many baby boomers are there? 80 million. There's 10,000 a day turning 65. You know, there's going to be a time where there is so much that's so many people that are going to need some form of long-term care. There's not enough apartments. There's not enough beds even to accommodate what's coming at this point in time. And one, you know, during COVID, I heard it from a friend of mine who's in the industry. She said, you know, there were really two pandemics. There was the COVID pandemic, but then there was the caregiver pandemic, right? And that has continued over the course of the last four to five years. These communities and facilities are really doing their best and I commend them for that, but there just isn't enough people for the demand at this point. So it is something that we're going to have to really look at. And frankly, I don't have an answer for it.

Yeah, I think what Ryan said is 100 % spot on. guess some of the optimism I have is that there is a large amount of investors that are getting into the senior living space. We're seeing that on a regular basis of more companies coming in, more private equity buying into facilities and showing interest in building facilities because to Ryan's point, there's a silver tsunami that's happening right now and where there's money to be made, people will figure that out. I do think technology, not to go back to that again, but I do think technology has a place in this space, whether it's through better monitoring systems, whether it's through robotic caregivers that are already being piloted in different areas of the country to help alleviate some of that caregiver lack of pool that's there. That'll be a new frontier that we really have

Hmm.

crossed yet so it'll be interesting to see what happens with that. There's some other models that are coming up now too where there's some models that have been very successful to have smaller homes with you know 10 to 15 residents let's say where it could be managed by two caregivers instead of needing a dining staff, a maintenance staff, right, a cleaning staff, your caregivers. It's a little bit easier to manage. So there's some models like that if those took

Mm-hmm.

that might provide some extra options for people. know, just this past year, there was some legislation passed that allows families to be paid as caregivers now. So we're starting to see that where some people are electing to be the full-time caregiver for their parent in their home and they can leave a job that they had because they can replace that income now. So there are some things happening that I am hopeful address that. But the thing that I always come back to that scares me the most is that we are living longer. People are needing care earlier along with that, which is a bit of an irony. And my concern is that the money isn't what it used to be. People don't generally get the very attractive pensions that our parents or grandparents had retiring from a job. A lot of them, it's more social security and what they've saved up on their own. And so those are the kind of things that

Mm-hmm.

that I worry about is that we're needing care earlier, we're living longer, and we have less money as individual clients to do that. having a conversation earlier on, doing the proper planning around the finances is gonna be even more crucial for people to have success in these settings.

Yeah, and I think that is really kind of it. Everyone in the industry is saying kind of these things like we have to prepare. And I think this gave our listeners a lot of information. And I think we should have you guys back really soon to kind of dive into some of this other stuff. But do you have any parting words for today?

Yeah, I just would say for families that are listening to this, caregiving is a really hard job. and it wears on you, it wears on your family. And so the best thing you can do is seek out help. Don't feel like you have to be a hero. There's lots of great resources out there to help you. Care Patrol is happy to step in and have that conversation with you. Shameless plug, we are a free service to help families. So to us, it's like, why wouldn't you talk to somebody who are experts in this field that can guide you? I would say this is don't wait for a crisis to try to do your planning. That's what we see so many families do. Knowledge is power. Have a plan in place. Have an emergency plan. Hey, if mom or dad have XYZ happen, right? Whether it's memory loss, whether it's mobility issues, whether it's dietary needs that aren't being met, have those conversations with your parents while they're healthy and get a plan in place for, hey, if something happens, mom, dad, what is your plan? And by the way, just saying I'm going to stay home isn't a detailed plan. You need to work that out, right? If you're staying home, then what does that look like? Are you paying for caregivers? Are you expecting us to come in and care care give you or have you thought about senior living and what that looks like? Have you ever seen any places? So those are conversations that should be had early and often, frankly.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And I would just say Eric took my, stole my thunder on the last one about having a plan. My grandparents, before we ever got into this, were placed in a nice facility where we grew up in Michigan. And I just assumed because he had planned that everybody plans and they went into a great facility and they both passed away in the last few years, but there were still some funds left and They never really had to go on Medicaid. there was like, my grandfather was such a good planner. He was so practical. And I just assumed, hey, everybody looks like this when they need that. And the answer is not everybody does. And probably most people don't. And again, it's not directed at any one group or one person. It's just the reality of that this is a new frontier for us when it comes to caring for our loved ones and what that looks like. Right. It used to just be You would just take mom into your home and you would care for her and that's what would happen well now with You know busy families and dual incomes and people working and you know being all over the place all the time It's really difficult for any one person to bring their mother or father home and to say I'm gonna be able to care for you It's noble certainly. It's a lot of times just not practical So so having that plan in place is just absolutely vitally important There's so many ways to do that and again shameless play Call Care Patrol, we would be happy to help you through this process from beginning to end. This is what we're here for.

Yeah, you guys do amazing job care patrol in general across the country. So no matter where you are, wonderful job. And it is it's a free service and you can find Eric and Ryan on LT Care now as one of our amazing care concierge providers.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

So please look for them and until the next episode where we will bring you back. Thank you guys and thank you everyone for listening today.

Thanks again, Lindsay. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, Lindsey. Bye.