A subject not many want to talk about is long term care insurance and this
blog is educational so why not? Some know that most all people today just assume that if
they ever should get hurt and need help either when young or when they get older, someone
will just be there to help. Of course, most people think the government will help. I
always assumed that a program like Medicaid would chip in and pay for my parents should
they ever need long term assistance when they were older. The fact is, Medicaid indeed
will chip in, but only after all of your parents' assets are long gone. So it seems that
in reality, many people need LTC insurance. Even radio show host and financial wizard Clark Howard suggests Long Term Care Insurance. The really
and unfortunate sobering fact is that in today's world, many of us won't be able to
really afford to pay for long term care for ourselves or our parents in order to leave
any kind of an estate. You can see that this is a wide spread myth that needs to be
addressed..
There are tons of complications to the question. Things like trying to figure out long term care premium discounts - facts that only a true
professional can help with. The truth is, we do highly recommend you go ahead and read
the sites we have linked in this article. You need to know that Long term Care Insurance
cannot and as you could surely guess will not stop you or your family from ever needing
long term care services in totality, but it can certainly help you protect yourself
fiscally and more importantly your family from the potentially huge financial burden or
depleting your assets.
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Who should own long term care insurance is a common question. I think it makes more sense for a married couple to own a policy, rather than a single person. If a single person uses all of his/her savings/income to pay for care, that's not so bad. If, on the other hand, a spouse requires care and uses up a significant portion of the couple's savings and/or income, the healthy spouse would have quite a burden to bear: both emotionally and financially. A single person should purchase long term care insurance only if it's very important for them to leave some of their assets to heirs or charity.
It has been mistakenly called "nursing home insurance". I read recently that less than 37% of claims on long term care policies are for nursing homes. More than 63% of claims are for home healthcare and community care.
The funny thing about long term care insurance is that the price of a policy can vary a lot from one insurance company to the next. Each long term care policy has a different way of charging premium based upon health history, marital status, choice of benefits, and even state of residence. It pays to shop.
What most people don't realize is that group long term care insurance policies are usually more expensive and have less benefits (particularly less benefits for home healthcare) than individual policies. It pays to shop and compare all types of insurance, but especially long term care insurance.
Scott A. Olson, CLTC
www.LTCInsuranceShopper.com
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