Long-Term Care Insurance

It’s a fact: People are living longer. Although that’s good news, the odds of requiring some sort of long-term care increase as you get older. And as the costs of home care, nursing homes, and assisted living escalate, you probably wonder how you’re ever going to be able to afford long-term care. One solution that is gaining in popularity is long-term care insurance.

Even though you may never need long-term care, you’ll want to be prepared in case you ever do, because long-term care is often very expensive. Although Medicaid does cover some of the costs of long-term care, it has strict financial eligibility requirements – you would have to exhaust a large portion of your life savings to become eligible for it. And since HMOs, Medicare, and Medigap don’t pay for most long-term care expenses you’re going to need to find alternative ways to pay for long-term care. One option you have is a long-term care insurance policy.

Many different companies offer long-term care insurance policies with features and provisions that vary widely from plan to plan. Common features include:

• Elimination period: The period of time before the insurance policy will begin paying benefits.
• Duration of benefits: The limitations placed on the benefits you can receive.
• Daily benefit: The amount of coverage you are eligible to receive based on daily health care costs.
• Optional inflation rider: Protects daily benefit from effects of inflation.
• Range of care: Coverage for different levels of care (skilled, intermediate, and/or custodial) in care settings specified in policy (e.g. nursing home, assisted living facility, at home).
• Premium increases: Whether or not your premiums will increase during the policy period.

 

Obviously, it is hard to compare different long-term care policies with all of these variables involved. Pacific Financial Designs has a long history of helping people of all ages make sound decisions when it comes to covering their long-term care need. We use a shopping approach where we are able to compare different companies’ stand alone long- term care policies as well as long-term care riders that can be used in conjunction with life insurance policies.

To find out more about long term care insurance and if it is right for you, contact us today.