Can You Negotiate Assisted Living Costs? 10 Tips


For the elderly or disabled, the benefits of assisted living can be a godsend. These benefits include medical care, nursing, and sometimes the company of an entire community. And if you’re a family member who’s decided upon assisted living for your loved one, it may surprise you to know that some of the costs are negotiable.

You can negotiate assisted living costs. For instance, newer nursing homes are often willing to haggle as a means to make an instant, positive impact on those in need. This same may apply to start-up home care services. It truly pays to ask questions and place different offers on the table.

Establishing an assisted living service for a loved one goes something like this: The service provider schedules a consultation, you outline what you need from it, and it quotes you a price. The service provider then hopes you don’t understand that some of what it offers is negotiable–but you can bend a lot of the brass tacks here. In this article, I’m going to tell you which ones and why.

What Assisted Living Fees Are Negotiable?

Assuming your haggling skills are good or better than good, you’re going to find a surprising amount of wriggle room at the consultation. The guy on the other side of the table may be wearing the most friendly smile in the world as he pushes the paperwork toward you, but before you sign anything, ask if the following fees are negotiable:

  • Room and board
  • Care fees
  • Entrance fees (or community fees)
  • Exiting requirements

Or better yet, have a senior living advisor ask about them for you. Senior living advisors are professionals who have extensive knowledge of nursing homes and assisted living services in the area. These advisors will know exactly which questions to ask and how to cut a deal.

If you’d rather not go through an advisor, you still needn’t step totally defenseless into a consultation room. Below are some tips on how to negotiate assisted care living costs like a pro.

Assisted Living Negotiating Tips

Before the big day when you start signing papers, I hope you’re willing to do some detective work. (Okay, by reading this article, you’re already doing detective work, but some pavement pounding is in order as well). Here’s a useful list of “must-dos.”

1. Find Out the Community’s Occupancy Rate

Negotiating off of a facility’s occupancy rate is a crafty little trick every adult child should know. It applies to residencies rather than home nursing providers. Here’s the down-low:

Residencies typically need at least 90% occupancy to make a profit. Too many empty beds mean not enough revenue. If an assisted living community has a low occupancy rate, it will likely be willing to wheel and deal.

So how do you find out a care facility’s occupancy rate? If you ask the right questions and talk to the right people, you can sometimes get this information on your own.

  1. Find out how many rooms are available.
  2. Then, find out how many residents currently occupy the premises.
  3. Finally, divide the number of residents by the number of empty rooms.

However, you’re going to find that most facilities get a little tight-lipped about these things. If that happens, contact a placement agency instead. The agency will provide some hard numbers. With those numbers, you’ll have a few more payment options under your command.

2. Dodge the Entrance Fee

An entrance fee is associated with live-in care facilities. It is a flat, one-time cost that allows your loved one to walk through the door on his or her first day. Entrance fees differ from security deposits in that they are not refundable.

Some facilities keep these fees low… and some really try to sock it to you. Get the home to waive its entrance fee by stopping in during a time of high vacancy or any other period that has said home eager to acquire new tenants. You can save thousands of dollars by not paying an entrance fee.

Not every facility is willing to waive its entrance fee for the simple reason that it uses the money to keep the property looking nice. Entrance fees–sometimes known as community fees–are also used for things like fresh paint, repairs, and room turnovers.

Still, it never hurts to ask whether or not the fee can be waived. For more information about entrance fees, check out this video:

3. Know What Kind of Care the Patient Needs

Should the assisted living service start things off with a package deal made up of a long list, go through that list and check off the things you don’t feel your loved one actually needs. I mention this because some facilities offer a la carte deals.

With a la carte, you can mix and match what services are necessary, leaving off the ones that aren’t. Assisted living facilities that offer a la carte will typically charge a flat fee for rent or rent plus meals, then let the purchaser choose what other services they’d like to have.

Granted, a la carte isn’t precisely the definition of negotiation, but you are shuffling the deck a bit when it comes to how much money is going to exchange hands. And at the end of the day, you’re going to save some squeezing green.

On the opposite side of a-la-carte is the “all-inclusive” package. Here we have a flat monthly fee for a fixed range of services. If you go this route, ask what services are included and whether or not the prices are negotiable.

4. Check Out the Competition

I’ll begin this section with a quote from Smokey Robinson: You better shop around. You do it for cars and houses. It works for assisted living packages as well.

For instance, a long-established living facility or home care provider will almost certainly ask for more money than, say, a start-up service looking to make a name for itself. Other assisted living providers more willing to negotiate include those located further away from town or those with low tenancy (see tip 1 above).

5. Ask About Special Offers

Special offers may vary from service to service. That sounds like it comes from a booklet of stereo instructions, but it’s true. During your consultation, don’t forget to ask about discounts and how to avail of them.

For instance, some assisted living providers offer move-in incentives, whereas others offer end-of-the-month seasonal deals. In any case, ask the facility as many questions about special offers as you see fit. It always pays to investigate.

6. Practice Time Management

Larger assisted living facilities face many of the same financial challenges as other enterprises. Care providers are frequently eager to discuss price reductions with potential clients at the end of the month, the end of the fiscal quarter, or the end of the calendar quarter.

This might result in significant savings for families seeking assisted living without a term limit. While many assisted living services are not especially flexible about monthly pricing, they sometimes provide “move-in” credits or waive the “community fee,” which can be the equivalent of many months’ worth of rent.

What this all amounts to can be summarized as: Catch them when they need you, not when you need them. The tact is wise and political and can really lessen the impact on your bank account.

7. Is Your Loved One Okay With Having a Roommate?

Almost all assisted living facilities allow for roommates. That is, your loved one may “bunk” with another tenant in the same room. Here we have a win-win situation because it reduces the cost for both you and the roommate’s family.

Ask the facility about its package deals concerning roommates. Even if it doesn’t offer any, you’re still saving money. Not only that, but your loved one receives other benefits, such as being less lonely and having an extra pair of eyes in the room for monitoring.

8. Ask Home-Care Agencies About Their Weekend Rates

Loved one going to stay at home with a nurse? If so, ask the home care agency if they charge extra for weekend hours.

If they do, consider an alternate source of weekend care or ask the agency if it discounts weekend service for extra hours during the week.

And speaking of those hours, most home care agencies charge about $20 for every 60 minutes of care. Make sure the agency knows what sort of care your loved one requires. From here, it might be possible to negotiate the hourly cost.

9. Investigate Possible Subsidies for Your Loved One

You may be surprised to learn that your loved one could qualify for free or highly-discounted assisted living. For instance, the state of Maryland offers help for low and moderate-income seniors in need of special care. The subsidy includes meals, nursing, and 24-hour supervision.

Check into what subsidies your loved one qualifies for, as they do vary from state to state.

10. Have an Agency Negotiate the Cost for You

If you don’t feel confident about your negotiating skills, you can always recruit talent from outside. Such talent comes in the form of an assisted living placement agency.

Placement agencies can handle all of the haggling for you. Once it knows what sort of care your loved one needs and how often, the agency will contact different care facilities to get you the best financial deal balanced with the most professional care.

A placement agency takes a great deal of weight off the shoulders of grown children who feel uneducated in the ways of getting great care packages at a reduced price. These agencies can be used for both live-in facilities and at-home care services. Consider this option for a professional approach to assisted living.

Will My Insurance Help Pay for Assisted Living?

Some adult children are still caring for loved ones on their own, keeping a hopeful eye on their insurance agency for when assisted living becomes necessary. But will insurance really pay for such services?

Some insurance companies will help pay for assisted living. Others, such as Medicare, do not cover any assisted living costs.

Another option comes in the form of long-term care insurance (LTCI). LTCI will pay more benefits than private agencies, although a plan needs to be set up before your loved one reaches age 80. Also, most programs do not go into effect until the loved one can no longer perform two activities of daily living (ADL).

Still, an insurance policy can be helpful in reducing the costs of assisted living. And as the saying goes: every little bit helps.

The Average Cost of Assisted Living

Generally, the average monthly cost for assisted living depends on the number of services you’ll need, the size of the apartment, and the location of the assisted home facility. For home care, you need to consider the number of benefits, plus things like the qualifications of the nurses, whether or not you’d like the nurse to live in, and how far away the patient’s home is from the care facility.

Assisted living costs in the United States average $4,500 monthly or $54,000 annually. It is also worth mentioning that the average cost of assisted living varies by state. Therefore, you can find that some areas charge as high as $6,500 a month, while other states can offer prices as low as $3,000 per month.

This same applies to home health aides. For instance, the average cost for a year’s home health service in California is $51,480. In Connecticut, it’s more like $45,756. Thankfully, you’re now fully equipped to negotiate your way into a great deal for your or your loved one’s assisted living! 

Despite your best efforts, sometimes you don’t have enough money to support your elderly parents. I’ve written a comprehensive guide on the actions you can take when assisted living money runs out. 

Check out these articles on Assisting Living

Conclusion

You’re not on your own when it comes time to pay the bills for assisted living. The negotiating tips above are proven through practice. The key is to balance a reasonable cost with the most expert care. I hope to have provided you with some extra confidence for your coming consultation.

tatorchip

Roger L. "Chip" Mitchell is the owner of Growing Gray USA. Having worked with seniors and their families for over a decade as the owner of ComForCare Home Care of Northwest Georgia, Chip is able to share his insights working with aging senior adults and their adult children who are now finding themselves in a new role as caregivers for their parents.

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