Long-Term Care Insurance
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Anonymous
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s/o from thread about parents with minimal retirement assets.
Can anyone recommend long-term care insurers that are reputable? Other advice when purchasing this insurance for someone else? |
Anonymous
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Long term care insurance is a bit of a work in progress for both insurers and consumers. Generally the advice is not to buy it if you have a lot of assets (say above $1-2 million), because you can self-insure, or hardly any assets, because you are better off saving your money and worst case you can use medicaid for nursing home care.
Even if you/your parents fall in that gap it may or may not sense to buy. While the industry likes to scare people with estimates of how much money nursing home care costs, the reality is that the median stay in a nursing home is 5-6 months (although the mean average is a year or so because a few people live a few years). Some people will tell you to buy it no matter what because chances are you'll need it, and some people will tell you never to buy it-- the need is overrated and the cos. will try and deny/stall you rather than pay benefits (figuring the clients are by definition old/near death). A number of insurers have stopped selling and/or raised premiums recently. It's really something you need to spend some time to try and educate yourself about-- inflation rates, partnership policies (which let you use medicaid if necessary without impoverishing yourself), benefits for married couples, etc. When I looked into it I found that both financial planners and insurance agents didn't necessarily understand the policies that well. The state of CT has been out front on partnership policies and their website has a fair amount of info. IIRC, AARP has some good stuff on the web as well, and if you google you should be able to find discussions on various money blogs like Motley Fool or CNN/Money discussing the issues. |
Anonymous
| A few years ago, the premiums were significantly raised on the federal long term care insurance plans. It caused an uproar. I decided not to opt in, as a result. It is very expensive, and the costs seem to be rising. Something to be aware of. |
Anonymous
| Bump. Any input from Federal Long Term Care Insurance Plans. How likely will it be there in 20 years? |
Anonymous
My understanding fwiw is that the way the federal LTCI plan is structured it gets renewed periodically (even 7-10 years?) and at that time they will reprice it and if the price goes up they will offer you the opportunity to reduce your benefit to offset the price increase-- so the product that will be offered in 20 years is less "guaranteed" than what you could get on the private market (where there may also be price increases but only if they go to the insurance commissioner and explain why they will go broke if they can't increase premiums) |
Anonymous
| I looked at the federal rates against what I already have with unum. Unum was half the price. I'm 45. |
Anonymous
| Do they require a physical? |