Posted on 02/10/2019 6:22:29 PM PST by Be Careful
I am starting to look for long term care insurance with little success. Most of the plans seem to be cut from the same cloth....they want your money as long as you are young enough with no pre-existing conditions. Would any of you out there have information to share regarding consumer-friendly plans? Thanks in advance.
Mr RooRoo and I have LTC policies with Prudential, have had the policies since our early 40’s. The idea is to sign up in your 40’s when you’re young and healthy, not likely to have chronic diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, heart disease. This will keep the premiums as low as possible.
When we started LTC insurance about 20 years ago the premiums were about $45 per month per person. Currently we pay about $105 per month per person. The current benefit is $200 per day per person. We can use the benefit to pay for nursing home care or at home skilled nursing care.
In Arizona the average cost of nursing home care for a private room is $6500 per month. In New York State the average cost of a semi- private nursing home room is $10,830 per month.
I strongly recommend having LTC insurance. You can build up a nice retirement nest egg, but it could be greatly depleted or wiped out by nursing home care costs. Medicare DOES NOT pay for nursing home care.
Happiness is a warm gun.............
Also: Mr RooRoo’s mother had an LTC policy, also with Prudential. She paid premiums for about 18 years and then she went into a nursing home for the last 3 years of her life. Her benefit was about $5000 per month or $60,000 per year. Her LTC policy was not a scam.
Did you have to take a physical to qualify for the $250k life insurance policy?
I don’t smoke or drink and am in relatively good shape. They checked blood, urine and BP. $107/month through Prudential.
I would think that LTC insurers would want smokers, cancer histories, obese, etc. or those likely to die quickly. Their worst case scenario would appear to me to be a healthy individual with Alzheimer’s lingering on for decades in a facility.
Yes; don’t. Employer offered maybe ok for that purpose (If stricken ill while in employment) but otherwise it’s a rigged game without even the ‘fun’ of Vegas ... you’re betting that you’ll have a long life suffering from an incurable yet debilitating malady. Woot.
If you are young, you are better off buying small cap stocks, instead of paying premiums. Each year, you benefit and your premiums are reverse. Your payments decrease, while insurance premiums increase.
Next, you own the asset, not others. This explains why premiums keep rising. It is to bump off older higher risk folks.
Next, insurance pools are with generally UNHEALTHY people, poor eating, & poor habits. That is a bad investment. You are paying for other people’s irresponsibly.
Next, studies show the more insurance you have, the worse your own habits. You take bigger dangers.
Next, the less insurance you have, the better you take care of yourself.
Also, catastrophic is the only thing to insure against. But younger people need it less.
Look at hybrid life insurance. Accelerated access rider. -Repays the death benefit while you are living to cover the cost of care. Universal life with a no lapse guarantee.
If you don’t need the LTC benefit you get a death benefit. This is not use it or loose it!
“Long term care” = people fulfilling needs of personal hygiene and daily needs for those who are incapable.
Ain’t gonna be me.
The interesting thing about LTC is that if you end up going to a nursing home to die, you will likely not be there very long. There have been huge changes in hospice care and medically assisted suicide (something I don't like).
I watched my mother move my father to a nursing home and he only lasted a little over a week before he died. My mother on the other hand lasted a little less than two years. My mom burned through all of her assets and in settling the estate I learned about Medicaid claw-back.
For some facts you should look at the statistics on how long people who are sent to nursing homes typically live. In this country we typically send people away to die. Kind of like Eskimo elderly being sent out on the ice pack. The elderly just die out of sight and out of mind. Not a good situation nor one that should be encouraged.
https://www.geripal.org/2010/08/length-of-stay-in-nursing-homes-at-end.html
Most people live less than 6 months after entering a nursing home. The vast majority less than 2 years from the above study. Even though nursing home care is expensive, if you are not going to get better and you are terminal hospice is much less expensive. It is the dementia patients whose story will break your heart.
In running retirement scenarios our financial advisors (yes more than one from different companies) concluded that we would likely die with well over a million in assets. We were told that we can self finance our long term care as probably we it will be less than the remaining money in our retirement accounts at our death.
To safeguard things we have various medical directives, medical powers of attorney, special trusts to protect assets, etc. If you self-finance you need a good attorney skilled in elder law and some frank conversations with your children and spouse about pulling the plug when quality of life fades or at least allowing you that option.
Another good article is here.
Good luck
I think mine pays $100/day. By the time I need it it will likely just cover part of what I need but it is something.
..............................................
My brother, age 81, pays $3,650 per month for an apartment in an assisted living facility.
“Most of the plans seem to be cut from the same cloth....they want your money as long as you are young enough with no pre-existing conditions.”
My sister had long term care insurance in her fifties. Each year the premium went up and it was easy to calculate that by her eighties it would be thousands per year. My family lives into their nineties and my mother is 101. None of them needed long term care until they were in their nineties. At which point her policy premium would have been like hiring a full time nurse. In long term costs she would have paid many times over for her care. An honest insurance agent told her, yes, that’s how it works. So, the answer is, unless something happens to you in your fifties you will lose out. If you have the money to pay the policy, you have the money to hire your own care giver.
They are only good for people who already have a lot of money. The reason is that the plans and projections the industry made when they started introducing these plans in the 90s were shot all to hell by the BushObama recession; premiums have skyrocketed beyond the ability of most middle and lower-middle income folks to afford; and there is no telling how high they will continue to go as the Baby Boomers are now entering serious old age.
My mother had one of these policies which provided an at home care provider. She had been paying into the policy for a long period of time. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and needed to use it they threw up every roadblock you can imagine to provide the care they promised. They knew she was terminal so they dragged out the process by saying paperwork was lost, never received, incorrect etc. Phone calls would never be returned, the necessary people to contact were out of the office - this went on for months.
I little bit of research showed that many others were experiencing the same thing in this industry. Fortunately my mother and sister had careers in state government and started writing letters with full documentation to the appropriate state agencies and then like magic the permission and payments for the in home care were received.
My mother was given six months to live when she received her cancer diagnosis, she managed to survive for a full year. All her care was in home although the policy would also have covered nursing home or hospice care. But it was pretty evident from the initial response that the company was trying to run out the clock on her life so as not to pay out anything. You need to do some serious research into any company offering this type of policy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.