<p>kelsmom-
You aren’t supposed to ask a lady her age
I am older than my DH and we are both in our 50’s. We’ve been messing around with this for a few years and finally decided it was time, befoe I had another birthday, and whil we were both in excellent health. </p>
<p>I honored my dad’s wish to stay in his home (though assisted living looks like more fun to me-- reminds me of dorm life) we wanted the cash without the continued drain on cash/capital (and it was a drain). I dont want to be in a medicaid facility. Blech. No thanks. And with the inflation rider there is some sort of extension of benefits provision that our state offers (perhaps poster above can explain) that keeps us off the medicaid roll for a longer time and extends the LTC benefit if we happen to exhaust it. And while DH could qualify for VA benefits, we’ll never qualify for aid and attendance, so no point wasting time looking at that.</p>
<p>So we qualified for a nice plan (after looking at many options) and got the lower, preferred rate. Its not cheap, but we’re worth it, IMO.</p>
<p>I recently bought a LTC Genworth partnership policy. California partners with a few LTC insurance companies to provide these partnership plans These policies are heavily regulated by the state to ensure they provide the benefits when needed. In order for the insurance companies to increase the premiums, they would have go through an onerous process with the state. Consequently, none of the partnership plans in Ca. have ever had their premiums increased.</p>
<p>The main benefit of these plans is that for every dollar the policy pays out, Ca allows you to protect your assets on a dollar for dollar basis in case you will need medicaid. Although I doubt this will ever be an issue for me, I like having the state closely scrutinizing the insurance company. It is in the state’s interest to make sure the policy pays very good benefits, so it does not have to use medicaid to pay for your long term care.</p>
<p>My parents purchased LTCI 20 years ago, and are now getting payouts even though they’re in Assisted Living, rather than skilled nursing. They had to qualify for the benefits by demonstrating that they need assistance with 2 of the 5 Areas of Daily Living. They’re getting 60% of the daily benefit (100% whenever one of them has a stretch in skilled nursing). Best thing they ever did.</p>
We had heard that also … however decided to buy LTC insurance in our early 50s … a few comments.</p>
<p>Like all insurance decisions the “optimal” time to buy depends on a lot of assumptions … MOST people use their LTC late in their life (late 70s / early 80s) and if you’re lucky enough to not need the insurance until that late then in the analysis we did somewhere around 60 is where the rates start increasing rapidily so 60 or so seemed to be the analytical optimal time to buy the insurance.</p>
<p>That said the previous paragraph was based on a big “if” … if you do not need the LTC until end of life care. Mom3ToGo and I are lucky enough to be in a postion to retire and even semi-retire young (work at fun low paying jobs in our 50s if we want) … so we have some assets. The question we wrestled with … what happend in the unlikely event one of us has a bad outcome and starts needing LTC when we are in our 50s before we hit the 60 sweet spot? The answer was the possibility of wiping out our retirement funds (and maybe even the kid’s college funds) … and the remaining spouse would be screwed.</p>
<p>Starting premiums at about 50 added 10 years of premiums which was a lot of money … this was partially offest by getting a better rate because we purchased earlier; and we will be paying lower rates from 60+ compared to if we started at 60 … off the top of my head this was a substantial offset (like about 50% of the additional cost). So the question was 10 extra years of coverage worth the incremental premiums … for us protecting against the downside the answer was yes … so we bought at about 50.</p>
<p>I forgot one big thought in my last response.</p>
<p>Mom3ToGo and I are pretty anti-insurance … after all all insurance buys expected financial value is negative; insurance companies would not sell policies where they do not expect to make a profit. We’re in a financial situation where we can self-insure … we do not have life insurance (other than employee provided) … we jack up our auto deductables for example.</p>
<p>That said the scenarios where we do believe in insuring are where a bad outcome could wipe us out financially … so buying negative-expected value insurance to fix a car bumper makes no sense to us. However protecting against liability if we accidentially paralyze someone in a car accident is something we insure against highly … similarily, we insure aggressively against one of us being a health situation that could dramtically attack our assets.</p>
<p>What we figured out eventually is … we do not want/need to insure against situations where we need to pay a few bills … what we do want/need to insure against are situations that could wipe out our assets. We can afford to lose an income (one spouse dying for example) without totally screwing up the family’s finances … however if one of us loses our income and also starts to costs big bucks to take care of; that situation puts the whole family’s financial well-being at risk … so we insure against this risk.</p>
<p>3togo – We look at insurance the same way. One comment for those considering insurance based on my experience with three parents/in-laws who needed care: Get the very best policy you can afford that pays the maximum percentage for in-home or assisted living care (vs. nursing home care) AND choose a policy that allows you to hire your own caregivers with lenient rules. As we learned, nobody wants to go into a nursing home until there is simply no other option, and we won’t be different. MIL’s policy would pay a much higher benefit if she were in a nursing home, but the reality is that her in-home caregivers cost more than a nursing home would cost. She’s lucky to have had a nest egg and enormous pensions that allowed her to pay the differential; we’re not in a generation that has his-and-her government pensions with full inflation riders. And be careful about what is required of a caregiver. MIL’s LTC company will only reimburse for caregivers who meet their criteria – basically unless someone’s a CNA, or been an RN, or had similar healthcare experience and credentials, they won’t pay. And yet, the ADL’s my MIL needs help with do not require any sophisticated assistance. Luckily, her primary caregiver was licensed as a registered nurse in her home country, and they accepted that.</p>
<p>Please note that if anyone is self employed you can buy long term care policies and write the cost off 100 % of the premiums as an employee benifit (Tax Qualified Plan Only). I bought a policy (Unum Provident Life) for my wife and I and and one for a key employee and his wife (all is early 50’s). We opted for a policy which has quarterly payments over a ten year period (ten pay) which will be paid in full for all of us upon retirement. The policy provides a 90 day waiting period and provides 250.00 a day of coverage at either a facility of choice or in-home for a 5 year period, has a 5% inflation factor buit in for future care cost increases. Please note I did an immense amount of research on LTC policies to educate myself, I also worked with a close trust worthy friend who is an insurance expert. I am convinced that I made the right decision based on the need for asset protection, alleviate my children from the potential burden of our care, and peace of mind for my wife and I that the we have a well thought out and complete financial plan.</p>
<p>One thing to remember as well as that some of us develop conditions that make us uninsurable. The odds of developing one of these conditions increases with age. I developed one such condition at age 42, so buying long term insurance has mostly been an interesting academic exercise.</p>
<p>My mom became incontient, inmobile, incomprehensive and in need of spoonfeed after the last fall she had and broke her hip. She has Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. We are hiring private care in her all paid condo 24/7. We will never be able to afford the agency rate of around $250/day with room and board. We are getting by at around $5,000/mo for everything including the condo fee and taxes. </p>
<p>In her condition, no one skill nurse care facility will care her as weill as we are doing at home for her. One of our caregiver was an ex-skill nurse facility RN, she told me that one caregiver will take care 6 to 8 “patinets” and she has to feed herself. Right now it takes more than half an hour for her to eat a meal, spoon feed.</p>
<p>However, this format will be very taxing to the children. I am not full time taking care of my mom, but I need to be here near her to make decisions, buy groceries and such. And when one of the caregivers leaves I have to replace her and that is a major undertaking.</p>
<p>One more thing to keep in mind when researching long term care policies is to be SURE (as much as one can these days) that the insurer WILL REMAIN SOLVENT & IN BUSINESS! So many are no longer in business and how will you get any repayment from an insolvent company? Remember Goldman Sachs? There are ratings for companies and especially in a situation when you will want payout a very long time from today, you want to be as sure as you can that the company will remain in business when you need them. This was a big issue when we were representing severely injured young clients who expected to live many decades after the lawsuit & settlements.</p>
<p>H & I are 55 and 56. We purchased LTCI a few months ago. I spoke with several different agents. They all said that the acceptance rate is dropping. Several years ago, only 15% of applicants were denied coverage. Now its up to 30%. We were reluctant to wait to much longer because we both seem to be developing minor, but chronic health issues. </p>
<p>My Dad has Parkinsons and needs help with everything except feeding himself. He has home health care about 16 hours/day. Their LTC benefit would completely cover live-in help. We tried that. My mother hired and then fired 3 people. We split the care between 2 wonderful women, neither one who can live in. Its more expensive (LTC covers about 10 of the daily hours). However, the care is one-on-one and we are determined to keep dad out of a nursing facility. We are very thankful that dad had the foresight to buy a LTC policy. You have no idea how valuable LTCI is until you have a family member that needs this kind of care.</p>
