Long Term Care at Holiday Inn?

You’ve probably heard of the Holiday Inn Plan, a tongue-in-cheek alternative to traditional long-term care. The latter may actually start as home health care, also known as assisted living, but, ultimately with longevity, you will likely find yourself in a personal care setting and, eventually, nursing care.

As for the Holiday Inn as a long-term care choice, it is a scenario which has drawn plenty of attention to a Facebook post by Terry Robinson. Specifically, Robinson argues that a Holiday Inn is a more affordable scenario than in a nursing home.

It sounds crazy but it all seems to add up. Now we are not about to proclaim that the Holiday Inn plan is practical, even pragmatic, but Robinson makes a lot of sense— make that dollars and cents— with his calculations.

For starters, he calculates that nursing home care where he lives costs about $188 a day for he and his wife together. No waiting list. They can check in immediately.

He then goes on to show that he can live “long term” at his nearby Holiday Inn for just under $60 a day.

How?  Using a senior discount, as well as one for an extended stay. Then you take advantage of the usual hotel freebies such as:

• that complimentary breakfast
• an exercise room with modern equipment
• a swimming pool and a heated one at that
• free wifi and a business center with printers and even a house computer if you don’t have a laptop
• maid service to clean and neaten your room, with an occasion tip to ensure the staff is vigilant and thorough
• a laundry room
• at least one cup of free coffee in your room and more in the lobby or breakfast room
• all that free stuff in your room like shampoo, toothpaste, soap, a hair dryer, decent closet space,
• and they’ll even fix anything in the room that is broken or not working properly
• Robinson says that leaves just under $129 a day he could apply to lunch, dinner and “incidentals.” Then there is that bus that stops at your hotel if you want to go to the mall or grocery store and even a shuttle to the airport.

  The one factor not mentioned in the Holiday Inn plan is what a nursing home provides— care. The Robinsons may be healthy and mobile now in their early retirement years, but that may not be the case in five, ten of fifteen years.

  Long-term care is more complicated than that, requiring financial planning and special insurance coverage. We’ll get into that in a coming blog