Lawyers who practice elder law dedicate themselves to learning the complex and interrelated issues that older adults and their families face with health care, insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and the use of specialized legal tools like trusts, durable powers of attorney, wills, advance directives for health care, and techniques of estate planning designed for older adults. While there are many reasons to build a response team, the most important reason involves responding to our rapidly changing system of health care. Legal planning involves the creation of key legal documents and building relationships among your response team members. There was a time when everyone's image of a health care provider was Marcus Welby, a kindly physician in whom complete faith could be placed. That image is quickly being replaced by huge hospitals, urgent care centers, nursing facilities, and complicated insurance forms.
Doctors complain they spend more time fighting insurers for approval than fighting disease.
Public and private insurers too often become the adversaries of the person needing care. For many older people, the hope is that health care reform will protect them from financial ruin if they need long term care, and that they will be able to live independently as long as possible. Their fear is that health care will become more impersonal, more complex, and more expensive. In the short term, the feared aspects appear to be increasing. Planning for the specifics of an uncertain future is not always possible.