Answers > What About Long-Term Care Insurance ?

zeuz December 23, 2010 at 9:54 pm

Only if you need it. Otherwise, no.

Odds are, you won’t need it.

Sharon T December 23, 2010 at 10:25 pm

It is not an investment. It is protection against a risk, which is what insurance is all about.

If you are wealthy, you probably don’t need it as you can afford to pay for your own care. If you are poor, you can’t afford it and can rely on medicaid if you need long term care.

If you are in the middle, you should consider it before you turn 60 when rates are low. Shop it carefully as plans vary in cost and quality.

Chris C December 23, 2010 at 11:24 pm

It shouldn’t really be considered as an investment. Is it a good idea to have? Absolutely!

I’m in Canada, but if Medicaid is anything like what our health care system is, LTC insurance is a must! Here’s why:

- The government funds the bare minimum to survive more or less. That doesn’t mean you will be confortable. You’ll likely be stuck in a room with another person or multiple people.

- The Baby Boomers are getting older. Where I’m from there is absolutely no talk at all abotu increasing the number of hospital/care home beds anywhere in prairies at all. That means that as the largest demographic in history continues towards the ‘care home years’, there will be fewer and fewer beds available for anyone else. The people with the money will get the beds. If you get severely disabled or ill and all the public beds are gone, what are you going to do?

- Retirement planning. When are you most likely to use LTCI? When you are old and grey. Why use up your hard earned investments to pay someone to chenge your diaper and feed you when you are in your last years? Use your retirement money to enjoy your first 15-20 years of retirement and use LTCI (AKA that big rich insurance companies money) to pay for the years you when you won’t enjoy life to its fullest anyways. And if you are rich? I would find it hard to beleive that anyone is richer than an insurance company. They can afford it more than you can.

- Depending on how the LTC is structured, it doesn’t always mean tou need to be put into a home. With my policy and the ones I offer to clients, if I cannot do 2 of the 6 daily functions of living (feeding, transporting [walking], transfering[getting out of bed and into a wheel chair, etc], contenience [ability to control bowel movements], bathing, toileting [ability to go to the bathroom], dressing), with out supervision (doesn’t matter who has to supervise, whether it’s a wife, friend, nurse or child) for a period longer than 30 days, then I will get paid $2000/week (tax free) as long as I meet those requirements (NO limit or cut off time period). If I dislocate my shoulder/break a major bone I’m on claim for at least 2 weeks (Arm in a sling or cast for 6 weeks [roughly 4 weeks of no claim for the 30 day waiting period]? can’t wash half my body properly[bathing], can’t button up my shirt or jeans[dressing] without help). With my policy, if I go on cliam for a total of more than 8 months in my life (I’m 29 and most of my family members live into their 90s), I break even. Typically the average person makes claims in the 24-36 month range (the last few years in a care home). Call insurance a bad investment all you want, but getting that kind of return on my money in the long run is far better than any other investment I’ve found. One of my clients went on claim for having a severely twisted thumb. That’s not really what LTC is meant for, but it qualifies.

- real Long Term Disabilities. A typical Long Term Disability policy will cover a person for up to 2 years (typically 5 years is the absolute max.). And that’s if you are not able to do ANY job (If you can sit in a wheel chair and sell pencils on the corner, you don’t qualify for LTD). What happens if you become seriously disabled (IE: you become paralized or get diagnosed with something like MS or Parkinson’s or something that is never curable)? LTD will cut off after a couple years and you will live the next what? 20? 30? 40 years? on welfare barely making it by.

- finally one word: Dignity. There is absolutely no dignity for either party in having a son (or daughter) wipe his fathers/mothers ass and scrub his genital area. Doesn’t matter if you are the kid or the parent, there’s nothing fun or cool about it. My grandmother had no insurance, and could not afford to put her in a home. If you would like to e-mail me and I will send you my mothers phone number and you can discuss how she feels about having to wipe her 84 year old obese mother’s (my grandmother) ass and sponge bath her (she could have been on claim for more than 8 years straight now becuase of her health conditions). Then you can ask how she felt about doing it for her 83 year old aunt a few years ago because no one else would. It’s easy to say “But I love my parents I would do anything for them” but wait until it happens. Loving them and doing anything for them is a whole lot different than loving them and being able to spend quality time with them rather than that qualitiy time be cleaning their diapers.

Terrence S December 23, 2010 at 11:29 pm

Basically, long term care insurance will provide coverage for people who are no longer able to take care of themselves. Therefore, if you are a healthy young adult, it is not something you need. However, if you think you might need any long term care due to accidents or illness, it is good to purchase it during your younger days. However, if you are about 50-65 years old and you foresee that you might need help to take care of you in the future, you can start considering buying the insurance.

You can get more information and free quotes for long term care insurance at http://www.insurancecentreonline.com/long-term-care-insurance-quotes.html