What is Long Term Care Insurance?

As we age, the likelihood we will need some type of medical or personal care increases.  Long term care consists of those services which help meet the medical and non-medical needs of people with a chronic illness or disability who cannot care for themselves for long periods of time.  Such services typically include assistance with normal daily tasks like dressing, bathing, and using the bathroom. Long-term care can be provided at home, in the community, in assisted living facilities or in nursing homes. For a good general explanation of such care, we suggest you look at the Taking Care of Tomorrow guide prepared by the California Department of Aging or the What You Need to Know About Long Term Care Insurance brochure. 

On average the need for long term care services lasts years, not weeks or months, and can be very expensive. For Alzeimer's/dementia, LTC services are typically required for 8 to 20 years. The cost of long term care can easily exceed $120,000 per year. Also, Medicare and other insurance plans generally provide only very limited LTC benefits.

Long term care insurance was developed for precisely this reason – to provide the needed financial protection against the cost of long term care that other plans simply don’t cover. If you need long-term care services, what financial resources could you call on? Do you have the necessary savings to pay for home health care for six months, or for a year or longer without the expense being a burden on your lifestyle?

If not, long-term care insurance may be a good option for you to explore.

While there are LTC policies that pay for 3 to 7 years, and policies that provide a cap on LTC benefits, we generally recommend LTC policies that provide lifetime benefits. These policies are the only ones that guarantee that your LTC needs will be met.  

It’s never too early to consider long-term care insurance because:

• The younger you are when you buy long term care insurance the less it will cost.
  
  
• Once you have the coverage, it is generally guaranteed renewable for life – it cannot be cancelled. Conversely, once you become too unhealthy to obtain it, you are unlikely to ever be healthy enough to qualify again.

If you are 45 or older and do not have LTC coverage in place, I encourage you to learn more now. For more information, including a personalized quote, please contact me.