I have a husband in Aged Care. We are charged a means tested fee. All the forms and information from Centrelink, My Aged Care etc say that income and assets are assessed on a 50/50 basis. This does ot appear to be so according to Dept ofHuman Services. If the recipient receives a pension, all of that pension is counted and half of any other income (wages, deemed etc). This causes the fee to be substantially higher than if the income were split 50/50. Can you please clarify which is correct?
I am sorry to disagree. Aged Care Act 44:24 Paragraph 4 says that if a person is entitled to an income support payment (ie Aged Pension in my husband’s case) then the whole of the payment is counted and half of any other ordinary income of a couple (wages in my case, plus deemed income - I am not on a pension ) . Social Security Act Module E Section 1064 E-2 states what ordinary income is. I have just spent many hours over the last few months trying to get this clarified with Human Services. I cannot see that Human Services sees it any other way, no matter what Centrelink forms may say, My Aged Care Website, Financial Advisors etc (all of which I have consulted)… The My Aged Care Website fee estimator is next to useless, in my case, because of this anomaly. It certainly gave me a false sense of security. Even supposing that I understood that it is only a guide and cannot be taken too seriously, I thought that if I doubled the amount it said (in any number of scenarios be close to the actual amount and able to budget accordingly. No such luck. From the first day he set foot in the facility, Human Services calculated that I was to pay at least another $10 a day on top of what I thought, so as you can see an extra $280 a month is not to be sneered at when on a very tight budget. Such fun… Thank you for hearing.
Hi Cooks,
Our friends from Affinity Aged Care have been able to answer your question.
Centrelink assess the income received by a couple on a 50%/50% basis this includes the pension received by the recipient.
We hope that helps clear things up.
Thanks,
The agedcare101 team