“Life-LTC Hybrid Sales Soar: LIMRA,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Use of life insurance-based long-term care (LTC) planning arrangements soared in 2017, according to data from LIMRA’s LIMRA Secure Retirement institute. New premiums from life-LTC hybrids increased 18% over 2017 levels, to $4.1 billion, institute analysts report. The number of policies sold increased 5%, to about 260,000. The average amount of new premium revenue per new policy sold increased about 12%, to about $16,000 per policy, according to calculations based on institute data.” LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform): Go hybrids! Life-LTC Hybrid Sales Soar:
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“U.S. Interest Payments to Equal Social Security Spending by 2048: CBO,” by Reade Pickert, ThinkAdvisor “The U.S. government is on track to pay creditors as much as retirees in three decades amid growing public debt and rising interest rates, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. The CBO projects net interest payments will exceed discretionary spending by 2045 and by 2048 match Social-Security outlays of 6.3 percent of gross domestic product. Social Security is currently the country’s largest federal program, the office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, said in its annual Long-Term Budget Outlook report.” LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses,
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“Where Do Older Americans Die?,” by Howard Gleckman “A fascinating and important new paper from Joan Teno and colleagues published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn (requires registration) also finds that those enrolled in traditional Medicare fee-for-service plans have different experiences from those who participate in Medicare Advantage (MA) managed care. MA enrollees are more likely than traditional Medicare beneficiaries to die at home, less likely to spend time in a hospital or nursing home in their last months of life, and less likely to be moved from nursing homes to hospitals and back as they near death.
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“An aspirin a day may keep dementia away, study finds,” by Elizabeth Leis Newman, McKnight’s LTC News “Low-dose aspirin may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research. Previous studies have found a link between aspirin and reduced risk of the disease, but Rush University scientists took it a step further. Aspirin decreased amyloid plaque pathology in mice by stimulating the type of animal cells that can clear cellular debris, said Kalipada Pahan, Ph.D, the study’s senior author and lead research investigator.” LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform): First headaches, then
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“Study rebuts idea that Medicare is wasted on the dying,” by James M. Berklan, McKnight’s LTC News “New findings from a team of academic researchers firmly contradict a widely held theory that Medicare futilely spends too much on seniors in their final year of life. Estimates place final-year-of-life spending at around 25% of all Medicare outlays. Investigators studied records of almost 6 million randomly selected individuals and found that a small portion of that was spent on beneficiaries expected to die within a year. … Researchers found that death is ‘highly unpredictable.’ Less than one in 10 people who die
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