Florida Long-Term Care and Medicaid

When someone you love begins to need long-term care, the questions can quickly become overwhelming:

Where can they receive the right level of care?
How can the family determine whether a facility is truly a good fit?
What will Medicare pay-and what will it not pay?
Can Medicaid help protect a spouse and prevent a lifetime of savings from being consumed by nursing-home costs?

Florida Long-Term Care and Medicaid: A Family's Guide to Finding, Getting, and Paying for Good Care provides families with a practical, plain-English roadmap through one of the most confusing and stressful transitions they may ever face.

Written by Florida elder law attorney Carl B. Zacharia, this 2026 edition explains the long-term-care system from both a personal and financial perspective. Readers will learn about:

- Care at home, adult day care, assisted living, memory care, nursing homes, and other residential options
- How to evaluate facilities and determine the appropriate level of care
- Activities of daily living, residents' rights, hospice, and palliative care
- The important differences among Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, long-term-care insurance, and private payment
- Florida Medicaid income and asset limits
- Qualified Income Trusts, commonly called Miller Trusts
- Florida homestead protections
- Spend-down planning, transfers, gifting, and other Medicaid pitfalls
- Powers of attorney, health-care directives, Lady Bird deeds, and other essential legal documents
- Key Florida Medicaid, Medicare, tax, and veterans-benefit figures for 2026

This book is not a do-it-yourself Medicaid application manual. Instead, it helps families understand their options, recognize potential problems before costly mistakes are made, ask better questions, and work more effectively with elder law attorneys, care providers, and government agencies.

Whether you are planning ahead or responding to an immediate health-care crisis, this guide will help you replace uncertainty with knowledge-and make more informed decisions for yourself, your spouse, or someone you love.