Specialist, LTCi, DI, Annuities, Life, Designs In Life, LLC, Utah
Consumers should become as knowledgeable as the can be about the risk of taking too long to die. For starters, find out what the costs for care are in the area in which you intend to retire and/or spend the latter part of your life. Call local care facilities and home care services and request a listing of costs for each facility and level of care. You can also get an idea of not only today's estimated costs but what those costs might be in the future by going to this website: http://www.genworth.com/content/genworth/genworth/coc_landing.html. Click on the state you want, then use the down arrow on the left side of the page to find the locale within that state that corresponds to your latter-years living area. Then, click on "Future Costs" to see how much the same care might cost when you need it, years from now.
Understand that no long-term care insurance policy can possibly guarantee that it will pay all of your health care costs after the point that you can't take care of yourself any longer regardless of how high a premium you pay.
Consult with an experienced insurance agent that specializes in long-term care. It is a specialty. Most agents that are licensed to sell it don't know very much at all about it.
If it happens to you, statistics are useless. But, here are a few that you should know when assessing if you want to buy insurance and how much of it would be worth the outlay in premium:
- The average claim lasts about 24-26 months (i.e. the insured dies)
- Of those that go beyond that period of time, over 90% of claims are settled within five years.
- To date, I believe that the record for a single claim is just over $1.4MM.
- Take projections of future cost with a grain of salt because it is not known what new medical technologies will come along, nor is it known what new care strategies might be available 20-40 years out.
If you can afford the premiums on a $300/day, 2-year pool of money (it could last longer than that) with no inflation rider on the policy today, you can probably afford some type of long-term care policy. If not, it is a waste of money to buy any insurance policy that you can't afford now and know you won't be able to afford it in the future.
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Understand that no long-term care insurance policy can possibly guarantee that it will pay all of your health care costs after the point that you can't take care of yourself any longer regardless of how high a premium you pay.
Consult with an experienced insurance agent that specializes in long-term care. It is a specialty. Most agents that are licensed to sell it don't know very much at all about it.
If it happens to you, statistics are useless. But, here are a few that you should know when assessing if you want to buy insurance and how much of it would be worth the outlay in premium:
- The average claim lasts about 24-26 months (i.e. the insured dies)
- Of those that go beyond that period of time, over 90% of claims are settled within five years.
- To date, I believe that the record for a single claim is just over $1.4MM.
- Take projections of future cost with a grain of salt because it is not known what new medical technologies will come along, nor is it known what new care strategies might be available 20-40 years out.
If you can afford the premiums on a $300/day, 2-year pool of money (it could last longer than that) with no inflation rider on the policy today, you can probably afford some type of long-term care policy. If not, it is a waste of money to buy any insurance policy that you can't afford now and know you won't be able to afford it in the future.