“Genworth Updates Website,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Genworth Financial Inc. is now getting most of its new sales from its mortgage insurance units, but the company’s new website update keeps the focus on the company’s long-term care planning products, services and data. Janice Luvera, a vice president at the Richmond, Virginia-based company, says in a statement about the revamp that Genworth wanted to shift away from the look and feel of a traditional insurance company website. … In an Aging & You section, Genworth has added information about caregiving and videos of real families who talk about their experiences with providing care.” LTC
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“Long-Distance Caregiving, Up Close: LTCI Insider,” by Margie Barrie, ThinkAdvisor “Several months ago, I received the telephone call that nobody wants to get. My brother called from Baltimore. He was in the emergency room with my 97-year-old mother who had fallen and broken her hip. I am now experiencing long-term care planning from a totally different viewpoint: as a caregiver, and doing it long distance. I live about 1,000 miles away in Florida. This is a huge reality check. I’ve been immersed in long-term care planning since 1990. But teaching it and selling this protection are totally different than living
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“Younger People Find Long-Term-Care Insurance Is Harder To Get,” by Jadah Riley, Financial Planning “Younger applicants for long-term-care insurance are being turned down at higher rates than before, according to a new study by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI). At the same time, the study, which evaluated leading LTC providers, found that people age 70 and over are rejected at the highest rate, 44%, a figure that didn’t change all that much from a similar survey done in 2014. … Rejection rates for younger applicants did rise significantly on a percentage basis, the AALTCI found. The decline
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“Live Free and Die,” by Henry Grabar, Slate “Is Grandma having trouble with her property taxes? A new Manhattan-based startup wants to buy her house and let her live there, for free, for the rest of her life. This makes sense as a business for a couple of reasons: For one, seniors have the nation’s highest homeownership rate. Close to 80 percent of Americans over age 65 own their homes. At the same time, older Americans are increasingly likely to retire without the savings to see them through their twilight years. In 2013, median retirement-account savings for families age 56–61 was
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“‘They Deserve It’: In Foster Homes, Veterans Are Cared For Like Family,” by Patricia Kime, Kaiser Health News “The $20.7 million-per-year program provides housing and care for more than 1,000 veterans in 42 states and Puerto Rico, serving as an alternative to nursing home care for those who cannot live safely on their own. Veterans pay their caregivers $1,500 to $3,000 a month, depending on location, saving the government about $10,000 a month in nursing home care. It has been difficult to scale up, though, because the VA accepts only foster homes that meet strict qualifications.” LTC Comment (from Stephen
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“‘Short-Term Care Insurance’ Faces a Name Fight,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Insurance industry players disagree about what regulators should call the product now (often) known as ‘short-term care insurance.’ Agents and brokers use the term to refer to products that cover nursing home care, home health care and other forms of non-acute health care for periods of less than 12 months. Some insurers stick with that product name. Others call the product ‘recovery care insurance” or “convalescent care insurance.’ State insurance regulators at the Senior Issues Task Force have dubbed the product ‘limited long-term care insurance’ in drafts of a model law
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“Clues to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s From How You Use Your Computer,” by Sumathi Reddy, Wall Street Journal “How you type or move a mouse could help detect whether you have a serious disease like Parkinson’s. A Duke University doctor working with Microsoft researchers sifted through data on the physical movements of computer users that came from millions of internet searches. Their study found links between some behaviors—such as tremors when using a mouse, repeat queries and average scrolling velocity—and Parkinson’s disease. They used artificial intelligence, or a computer analysis, to identify which of the metrics separated a control group from
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“What Explains The Widening Gap In Retirement Ages By Education?,” by Matthew S. Rutledge, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College “The gains in the average retirement age since the 1990s have been driven almost solely by those with more education. Today, male college graduates retire three years later than high school graduates (see Figure 1). While the story is more complicated for women because of the dramatic change in their labor force participation over the latter half of the 20th cen­tury, the overall message is similar: like men, the gap in average retirement ages by education has grown substantially.”
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