What a Nursing Home Room Really Costs Now in the 5 Most Populous States

Lincoln Financial has come out with its latest effort to help advisors warn clients about a common destroyer of retirement dreams: long-term care costs. The company has posted a new, 50-state What Care Costs website, based on cost survey data collected by LTCG in 2021. Lincoln has been a leader in efforts package long-term care benefits together with life insurance. LTCG is a company, recently acquired by illumifin, that helps U.S. insurers handle benefits payments for about 40,000 of the 285,000 Americans who are now using private long-term care insurance benefits to pay for care. Like previous What Care Costs websites, the new website is a kind of interactive U.S. long-term care cost atlas. Advisors who have a sponsor code from Lincoln can see average costs for nursing home care, home health care services and assisted living facility apartments in all 50 states. Advisors can also search for data by ZIP code. The current sponsor code, given in the press release announcing the site launch, is "Lincoln." In the nursing home sector, for example, daily rates for private nursing home rooms range from $225, in Missouri, up to $531, in Alaska. For a look at what a private nursing home room cost in 2021 in the five most populous U.S. states, see the gallery above.

The Future

In some communities, the costs of some services may have been lower in 2021 than they were before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, because of the devastation the pandemic has caused for older Americans and care providers. But because of other pandemic effects, price increases are rolling out now, and more increases are probably coming soon. Nursing home providers recently told the American Health Care Association, a long-term care provider group, that their operating costs have increased about 41% in the past year. (Image: Potstock/Shutterstock)