The pressure reaches well beyond older adults themselves. Family caregivers are often covering substantial expenses while managing work and their own retirement plans. According to CareScout CEO Samir Shah, roughly 70% of adults over 65 will need some form of long-term care during their lives, yet relatively few have made financial plans for it.
Care Costs Are Rising Across Nursing Facilities and Home Services
Prices for nursing homes and adult day services have increased faster than overall consumer prices for decades. Since 1997, nursing home costs have risen 212%, while adult day services are up 109%. More recently, overall prices rose about 11% as inflation eased from 2023, compared with roughly 17% for care services.
Labor costs are part of that increase. Wages for nursing and residential care workers rose from about $17 an hour to nearly $27 over the past decade. Between 2016 and 2026, wages in that sector increased 57%, compared with a 47% rise across all private-sector wages.
Families are feeling those increases directly. Lana Mountford, 75, entered an assisted-living facility in 2021 for $4,300 a month. After surgery, she moved to a two-bedroom unit costing $5,500 monthly, and the price later approached $7,000. She eventually bought a $580,000 home in a community for people aged 55 and older and now pays $200 a week for six hours of caregiver support.
Home care brings similar pressures. According to data from A Place for Mom, the median cost of home care is about $34 an hour. A March AARP report found that private-pay costs for home health aides increased 48% between 2019 and 2024, while homemaker services rose 47%.
Families Face Difficult Choices Over How to Pay
For some households, long-term care expenses reach six figures. Tamara Johnson, 58, estimated that her family spent more than $700,000 caring for her mother, who had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and later her husband after serious medical problems. She ultimately left her executive job to care for him full-time.
Others have faced similar financial strain. John Nuar and his wife spent about $120,000 over three years on his father’s care. Monthly memory-care costs rose from $4,200 to $6,600 before his father’s death. Nuar said the continuing uncertainty over how long those expenses would last created lasting stress.
Medicaid pays for nursing-home care and some in-home support, but eligibility and coverage can differ. Nuar said his father would have qualified for Medicaid drug coverage in Virginia but not in Michigan.
Policymakers have proposed broader approaches. According to Business Insider’s reporting, federal proposals have included the Caring for Seniors Act and the bipartisan WISH Act, while Washington state created the WA Cares Fund through a 0.58% payroll tax, with a lifetime inflation-adjusted benefit cap of $36,500.
For families already paying for care, the problem remains immediate: the costs are rising, the need can last for years, and the financial consequences often extend to the next generation.
