“The cost of long-term-care insurance keeps rising,” by Walecia Konrad, CBS News

Quote:

“Long-term-care insurance seemed like such a great idea. Buy a policy when you’re in your 50s or 60s, while you’re still relatively healthy, pay your monthly premiums and in return you’ll have help managing the astronomical costs of a nursing home, assisted-living facility or personal aide when the time comes. … But long-term-care insurance hasn’t exactly worked out that way.”

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

This article, relatively more accurate than most of its ilk, has gotten wide play in the media. Ironically, the same problems it recounts besetting LTC insurance, a relatively small payer, also apply to Medicaid, the major LTC payer. For example: higher premiums for LTCI? Compare decades of exploding costs for Medicaid. Insurance actuaries underestimated LTC costs? Where were the Medicaid actuaries? Assisted living popularity caught LTCI carriers by surprise? Medicaid continues to expand ALF and HCBS coverage which people prefer with no end in sight. Low lapse rates hurt LTCI? Medicaid is the LTC default with no lapses possible to mitigate future costs. Low interest rates hurt LTCI? Imagine what will happen to Medicaid and all the entitlement programs when interest rates return to the norm and the federal government can’t afford the carrying costs for $21 trillion in debt, not to mention another $100 trillion or more of unfunded liabilities. If you think private LTC insurance disappointed, just wait to you see the inevitable outcome for its public sector substitutes.

The cost of long-term-care insurance keeps rising

#long-term-care
#goldencareagent