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Long Term Care Insurance: Weighing the Options

 

Many consumers, especially Baby Boomers, are considering the need for long term care insurance and weighing their options. This is smart planning as the need for long term care services can unravel your carefully laid retirement plans and ruin the estate you intended to leave behind. Long term care insurance can be beneficial to most anyone reaching retirement age, but there are many options available and you need to know which is best for you.

 

Options Other Than Long Term Care Insurance

The first item to consider is whether or not you even need long term care insurance. Are there better options out there to help pay for long term care services if they are required? In most cases, there are not. Some health insurance plans will pay for the first 30 days, but no more. Medicare will provide about the same level of coverage as a good health insurance plan. Medicaid will pay for a certain amount of long term care expenses, but remember, you have to qualify financially. If you have savings and any sort of estate to pass down, you will have to lose it before Medicaid will step in to pay.

 

Long Term Care Insurance for Various Types of Treatment

If you have decided that long term care insurance is something you do need, the next step is to look into the coverage options. There are many. To begin, think about the types of care you may need. Long term care is usually received either at home a few times a week, at adult day care, at an assisted living facility or a nursing home. You can get policies that cover only expenses for one or two types of care or policies that cover expenses for any type of treatment.

 

How Much Long Term Care Insurance Do You Need

The next thing to consider is how much coverage do you need? There are two major elements here to think about. The daily benefit and the lifetime maximum benefit. The daily benefit is how much the policy will pay out on a daily basis for long term care expenses. This will require investigating the average cost of long term care in your area for each type of care or facility and then deciding how much you can afford to pay out of your own pocket. The lifetime maximum benefit is the total amount the policy will pay out over its lifetime. The average need for long term care is 3 years, so you want a policy that can pay out the daily benefit over a 3 year period of time.

 

Be Careful of Long Term Care Insurance Restrictions

As you weigh your options and compare policies, you need to pay attention to a couple of items that can sneak up on you and can make your policy not worth the money you put into it. First, make sure that the benefit trigger is no more than the inability to perform 2 activities of daily living unassisted. Second, make sure there are no exclusions for specific conditions such as dementia, cancers, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

 

Use Long Term Care Insurance Quotes to Weigh Options

The easiest method of weighing your long term care insurance options is to gather rate quotes to see how much specific policies will cost. Change the numbers around, add specific coverage areas and then get a few more quotes to see how the cost has changed. The quotes are free and you can get as many as you like, so have at it to be sure you get the long term care insurance you need that also fits your budget.

Long Term Care Insurance FAQ