“How do we pay for this?” is almost always the second question families ask. (The first is “do we actually need help?”)

At Lakeshore Helping Hands, we accept private pay and long-term care insurance. That’s intentional — it lets us keep rates honest, service levels high, and paperwork minimal. Here’s what each option looks like, and what to do if your situation falls outside both.

Private pay (out-of-pocket)

The most common way home care gets paid for — especially at the start — is just directly: check, ACH, or credit card.

Our published rates are $40–$45/hour for hourly care and $500–$550/day for live-in care, with a 6-hour minimum shift on hourly. We publish these openly because families deserve to know what they’re getting into before the call, not after.

Private pay is simple, flexible, and has no approval or qualification hoops. It comes out of savings, monthly income, or proceeds from downsizing — and for many families, it’s the cleanest path because there’s nothing to wait on.

Long-term care insurance

If your loved one has a long-term care (LTC) insurance policy, this is usually the next thing to check. LTC policies often cover in-home care — sometimes generously — but every policy is different, and the process of activating benefits is finicky the first time through.

Things to look for in the policy:

  • Elimination period — how many days of care you pay for before coverage kicks in (often 30, 60, or 90 days)
  • Daily or monthly benefit — the maximum the policy pays per day or month
  • Triggers — usually needing help with a certain number of “activities of daily living” (bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, transferring, continence)
  • Home care coverage — some older policies only cover facility care, so read carefully
  • Benefit period — how long the policy pays (years, or sometimes for life)

We help families verify benefits and handle the paperwork side of activating a policy. It’s one of the more useful things we do for clients because the process is surprisingly confusing the first time you go through it.

A note about Medicare

Medicare is the option people expect to cover home care — and it usually doesn’t.

Medicare covers home health care, which is short-term, medical, skilled care after a hospital stay (nursing, physical therapy, wound care). It does not cover ongoing home care, which is the non-medical daily assistance most families are actually looking for.

This surprises almost every family the first time they hear it. If you’ve been planning on Medicare as your primary funding source, you’ll want to rethink early.

What we don’t accept (and why)

To keep our service quality where we want it, we don’t currently accept Medicaid waivers, VA benefits, or other state or federal program funding. We think families deserve to know that upfront rather than discover it mid-conversation.

If you’re planning to pay through one of those programs, you’ll want to look for an agency that’s enrolled with that specific program. We’re happy to point you in a useful direction if we know of one — just ask.

How we help you figure it out

Every family that calls us gets a free consultation, and part of that conversation is walking through whether private pay or LTC insurance is a realistic fit for your situation. We don’t sell insurance, and we’ll tell you honestly if a family’s funding plan has a gap in it.

The cost of home care is real, and we’d rather have the hard conversation upfront than surprise anyone a month in.