Because most people desire to stay in their own home as long as possible, the long-term care insurance industry has designed policies to accommodate this wish in recent years. These policy benefits include:
• Home health care visits to help with the activities of daily living (transferring, bathing, dressing, toileting, eating and continence)
• Homemaker services (cooking, cleaning, laundry)
• Skilled care visits (nursing, rehabilitative and therapeutic care)
• Home modification benefit (such as a ramp and widening of doors for access of a wheelchair; changes to bathroom and kitchen; stair lift; therapeutic equipment)
Of course, policies continue to cover traditional care in assisted living facilities, nursing homes, adult day care centers and
HospiceCare when home care is no longer felt to be adequate for the individual.
Along with new types of policies, another change in the long-term insurance business is the age at which people purchase long-term care insurance. Over the last 22 years, the average age of long-term care insurance purchasers has dropped, industry-wide, from age 66 to 56.
Why are people in their 50s, and even 40s, purchasing long-term care insurance protection?
• Because all of us are living much longer but inevitably in declining health, younger baby boomers have seen the long-term care needed by many of their parents, relatives and neighbors, with the ensuing cost and drain of their assets and income.
• They understand the difficulty of trying to care for a parent or parents when both partners are working and raising their children — even if geographically close by.
• They realize that it takes good health to qualify for a long-term care insurance policy, and the younger you are the greater your chances are to qualify.
• They also have learned that the premium cost is much less at a younger age, and that they probably are more apt to qualify medically for an additional and significant premium discount.
Younger couples have also been taking advantage of a relatively new and innovative benefit called Shared Care. Shared Care allows either spouse to use benefits from the other’s policy, if his or her benefits are exhausted.
This provides for the extension of benefits for either spouse at time of claim.
If you think you will never need long-term care, think again. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that “at least 70 percent of people over age 65 will require long-term care services at some point in their lives.” The average annual cost of longterm care in 2008 was $75,000. If we have money, we have to pay for it ourselves.
Bill Kumpf is president of Senior Care Insurance Services in Madison. You can reach him at 273-3443 or
seniorcare@seniorcareinsurance.net.