ELDER LAW / LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE

"Today we are going to look at the only form of insurance that will pay for the cost of long-term care. It is called Long-Term Care Insurance, or LTCI."

-THE SAN RAFAEL PATCH (OCT 3, 2010): WHAT IS LONG-TERM CARE INSURANCE?(http://sanrafael.patch.com/articles/what-is-long-term-care-insurance)

Long-term care insurance (LTCI), also known as nursing home insurance, is the only form of insurance that will pay for long-term nursing home care.  If you are single, the odds are 50 percent that you will need long-term nursing home care at some point in your life. If you are age 65 and married, the odds are 75 percent that you or your spouse will need long-term nursing home care. The average nursing home stay is 2.5 years, at an estimated national average of more than $75,000 a year.

And yet, most people do not have long-term care insurance. One reason people fail to purchase LTCI may be that they simply do not know about, or understand the product well enough to make a purchase. Last week I came across an article online that did an excellent job of explaining the various types of long-term care insurance, including Traditional, Partnership, Annuity-Based and Life Insurance-Based. I encourage you to read the entire article here, but in a nutshell:

• Traditional Long-Term Care Insurance is based on a maximum daily benefit for a period of time.
• Partnership LTCI protects assets from a Medicaid spend-down. Should you run out of benefits, the amount of coverage paid out protects an equal amount of assets should you go on Medicaid.
• Annuity Based LTCI is a newer product. An annuity with an LTCI rider enables you to take payments from an annuity to pay for long term care expenses tax-free.
• Life Insurance Based LTCI is basically a life insurance policy with a long-term care rider. If you need long-term care, then these policies will pay a percentage of the death benefit every month for a preset number of years.

You can learn more about long-term care planning on my website (Click here for Elder Law and Long-term Care Information). If you would like advice and counsel regarding your options, including an evaluation of any LTCI policy before you sign the application, please give me a call.  If I can't help you, I am confident that I have connections in the insurance industry that will be able to check facts about your options.

Comments

[Life Insurance Georgia]

I think that maybe people get so occupied with paying life insurance, thinking it's the only one that matters because it's for their families, that they neglect to think of their own future care. Life insurance will not pay for this, and you certainly don't want your children to shoulder the finances, either. Long-term care is a guarantee that you will be taken care of financially when that time comes.