<p>Long term care plans are pretty straight forward. I don’t know what you mean about exclusions, etc. Sure there are some not so good plans out there but for the most part, the reputable companies have very good plans. The very wealthy flock to these policies because they can legally shelter a lot of income in these plans. Also, why spend the money on long term care if you don’t have to. General rule of thumb is that one year’s premium for LTC policy is equal to one month’s cost of care, so you can fork out the $100,000/year for your LTC or pay a couple thousand in premiums…or a lot less depending on when you buy them. Our premiums are $700/year. That covers 2 days in a nursing home here.</p>
<p>Then, add in the tax benefits and our net cost is about $500/year. That benefit is sliding so when we are in our mid 50’s or so, our net cost will be zero.</p>
<p>Also, long term care policies are NOT about nursing homes, yes, they pay for those, but they are about keeping you in your OWN home for as long as possible. Alzheimer’s patients are a perfect example–say someone needs help 2 hours/day early on in their disease and that cost’s $75/day (making up numbers). They file a claim with their LTC policy to get that covered but they are paying for $300/day coverage. The rest gets banked for later use. Then say 3 years later, the patient needs 5 hours/day of help, also paid for by their LTC policy, in their home. After say 9 years of needing in home help, they need to move into a nursing home, LTC pays for that as well. Then they live in that nursing home for the 2.5 years on average, after being on a LTC claim for 11.5 years–which is close to average for needing long term care–not nursing home care, long term care in your home and nursing home.</p>
<p>You DO want to make sure you get a policy that will do something for you. Since most states have a 5 year look-back period, you want at LEAST that. We have unlimited LTC payouts on our policies.</p>
<p>My mom was on a LTC claim for over 20 years…it’s worth every penny.</p>