“Paying for Long-Term Care: How It’s Changing,” by Amy Fontinelle, Investopedia

“Insurance companies are trying to change that. ‘If I had to summarize a single technique being employed by all the major players, it’d be a convergence around smaller benefits,’ says Stephen D. Forman, CLTC, senior vice president of Long Term Care Associates, an insurance agency in Bellevue, Wash. Smaller policies are the way for insurers to reach the middle-market consumer, so insurers are offering policies with lower limits and more-flexible premium payment periods. Programs in the research and pilot stages include one that starts as a term life insurance plan during the policyholder’s earning years then transitions to long-term care insurance later in life and another designed as a flexible retirement plan, such as a 401(k) or IRA, with long-term care insurance built in, explains Forman. We could also see mandatory, universal, payroll-financed, catastrophic long-term care insurance that works as a public-private partnership, similar to how the Medicare supplement market works.”

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):

Despite years of discouraging news and negative public policy, the LTC insurance industry remains resilient and creative.