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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.
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