What a Medical Alert System Costs, and What It Compares To
A Help Now system runs $27.95 to $46.95 a month. Here is what every other kind of help for an older adult costs, so you can put that number in context.
What ours costs
Between $27.95 and $46.95 a month depending on the system and how you pay. The equipment is included at no cost, shipping is free anywhere in the country, there is no contract, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee from the day it arrives. Veterans and Meals on Wheels recipients save $5 every month. See every system and price.
What everything else costs
These are national median figures from the CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey, the long-running industry study formerly published by Genworth, released March 2026.
Monthly figures are the survey’s annual medians divided by twelve. Costs vary a great deal by state, and CareScout publishes state-by-state tables if you want your own numbers.
The honest part, before you read too much into that table.
A medical alert system is not care, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It does not cook a meal, help anyone bathe or dress, drive to an appointment, or remind anyone to take a pill. It does exactly one thing: when something goes wrong, it gets a trained person on the line and help on the way, fast, without anyone having to reach a telephone.
If someone needs daily help, they need daily help, and a button is not a substitute for it. Please do not buy this instead of care that someone actually needs.
The comparison that is actually fair
The useful way to read the table is not "this replaces that." It is that the button is a very small fixed cost sitting alongside whatever else someone needs.
Put it this way: paid in-home help runs about $35 an hour. One hour a week of it is roughly $152 a month, which is more than three times our most expensive system. So the real question is not whether you can afford a medical alert system. It is whether having one might let someone stay in their own home a while longer before the bigger numbers on that list start.
Nobody can promise that it will. What we can say is that the cost of finding out is about a dollar a day.
What we do not charge for.
- The equipment. It is included, and it stays ours, so there is nothing to buy and nothing to resell.
- Shipping, anywhere in the United States.
- An installation visit. You plug it in and press the button once to test it.
- Cancelling. Month to month, and returning the equipment ends the billing.
Ways the monthly cost comes down
- Veterans and Meals on Wheels recipients save $5 every month, on any system.
- Paying by bank account instead of card is cheaper on every system.
- Paying quarterly takes another $1 off each month; paying annually takes off $2.
- We match any competitor’s pricing, and we do not raise the rate on an existing customer.
Does Medicare or insurance pay for it?
Original Medicare does not cover medical alert systems. Some Medicare Advantage plans include them as a supplemental benefit, and some state Medicaid waiver programs and Area Agencies on Aging help with the cost, so it is worth one phone call to your plan before you assume you are paying the whole thing. We are happy to tell you what to ask them.
See what it would actually cost you
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Source: CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey, national medians, published March 2026. Help Now Medical Alert is the nationwide service of Bay Area Vital Link, Inc., answering emergency calls since 1981.