How we write: sources, who supports the site, and the lines we do not cross

Who publishes this site

Paying for Care STL is published by OwnersFirm, a St. Louis firm that builds reference desks like this one. Nobody who writes here is a physician, a nurse, a lawyer, an insurance agent or a CPA, and no page pretends otherwise. That is why articles carry a desk byline instead of a named author: a reader should never mistake a comparison table for professional advice about one family.

How a page gets written

1. Start from the question. Each article answers one thing a person actually types when the bills start: does Medicare pay, what is an elimination period, what do I sign first.
2. Go to the agency that runs the program. Medicare.gov for Medicare. The Missouri Department of Social Services and the Department of Health and Senior Services for MO HealthNet. VA.gov for Veterans. LongTermCare.gov and the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance for long-term care policies. The IRS for taxes. The Missouri Bar for legal forms.
3. Quote the rule in the agency's own terms. If Medicare says part-time usually means up to 8 hours a day combined, that is what the page says, with the link. We do not round, stretch or restate a limit in stronger words than the source uses.
4. Mark what the source does not settle. In the front-page table, "Ask" means the official pages we read do not answer that cell. We would rather send you to the program than guess.
5. Date it. The comparison table carries an "as of" date. The sources page lists each URL with the date it was opened.

What this site will not do

• No prices. No hourly rate, no range and no "average cost" for any company. We have not found a public source we trust for a specific St. Louis company's rate, so rate questions go to the company, in writing.
• No dollar figures we did not read on an official page. Program limits change every year. When a page needs one, it links the agency's current page rather than printing a number that will go stale.
• No diagnosis and no medical advice. Whether a parent is homebound, needs skilled care or lacks capacity is a question for the physician. Medication questions go to the doctor or pharmacist.
• No legal or tax drafting. No power of attorney, trust, gifting plan or tax return is written here. Those go to an elder law attorney or a CPA.
• No eligibility decisions. The agency, the plan or the insurance company decides who qualifies. A table on a website does not.
• No ranking of care companies and no negative claim about any hospital, facility, agency or insurer.
• No analytics tags and no tracking pixels on this site.

Who supports this site, stated plainly

The two companies are not commonly owned.

The placement is labeled every time it appears: in the featured section on the front page and in a small box at the foot of each article. It is never a row in the comparison table, never a rank and never the answer to a question about who pays. The articles were not written to favor it.

The one form on the front page sends a name, an email, an optional phone number, a preferred way to be contacted and a short note directly to New Plan Care Solutions. It asks for no health details. The form says phone is optional, and New Plan Care Solutions contacts people only the way they ask.

Corrections

Government pages change without notice. If a line on this site no longer matches the page it links to, the live official page is the record, and we fix ours. To report one, contact the publisher through ownersfirm.com with the page address and the line in question. Corrections are made in place, the sources page gets the new open-date, and the table's "as of" date moves when the table is rechecked.