For me at Home $7,800 at $260 per day?
We are both age 92 & former Army Officers in WW-2 she a Nurse, Me a Flying Officer in the Western Pacific, both currently receiving Aid & Assistance @ $1,418 mthly each, which is just under $95 per day, combined towards our combined, daily rate of $485 ($225 daily, wife; $260 daily, me). The daily "short-fall" is $390 & for 360 days is $140,000. A very steep sum, in dire need of help, swiftly. Kindly acknowledge @ your earliest convenience. Thank you.
veteransfinancial website
Once you are at the point of needing more costly daily care in a facility & there is not the funds to private pay even with A&A then most apply for medicaid. If there is a VA LTC facility that is another option as those cover all costs, although they seem to be few and far between. We have a spanking new one nearby us in Gulfport that has a 2 year waiting list with names from all over the US.
I would suggest you contact the social worker at the memory care facility to go through how best to apply for Medicaid. Hopefully this memory care takes medicaid so she does not have to move. But if not, the social worker should be able to come up with a list of facilities that do. Your wife & you may need to get medically showing in your medical file the need for a higher level of care if you want the both of you to go into a facility together. Often memory care is viewed as custodial care so her medical chart may need things changed to reflect her needed for more skilled nursing care which is what medicaid covers.
If she or you go onto Medicaid, A&A will stop paying the $1418 and will drop to about $100. But medicaid will pay for all of her care costs. She will have to continue to do a copay or her SOC (share of cost) of her monthly income (SS and any other retirement) to the facility under medicaid rules; if you need some of her income to continue to live at home, then you need to apply for CSRA. CSRA is community spouse resource allowance - I think of it as alimony for the spouse who did not go,into a facility. Its also called MMMNA - minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance.. CSRA varies by state & often you need an attorney to get the maximum. Based on what it was like for a couple of my friends parents, VA could take several months to process the change so she will continue to get the $1418 for a while but don't spend it as there will be a clawback on those payments.
The whole mice maze of VA, Medicaid, Medicare, can be overwhelming. For spouses, it is so much harder as your focus is on your wife and there are only so many hours in the day. Do you have family to help with all this? For couples, getting an elder care attorney to go over things can be valuable as there are things that work well for younger spouses but for elder ones pose a problem. Like most couples have each other as their life insurance beneficiary but once 1 goes onto Medicaid that is a bad idea as the insurance payment disqualifies then from medicaid & who is going to be there to deal with this for the NH spouse as the other spouse has died?
The majority of NH & Medicaid situations are widows or widowers and although it too has reams of paperwork, it is pretty straightforward in eligibility.Most of what you hear or read is all geared for solo elderly. For couples it's a lot more complex.
https://www.agingcare.com/Veterans-Assistance