Forbes has an interesting new article that traces the history of long-term care insurance in America. It’s a topic I suspect many college history courses fail to touch upon, and not many more law school classes either.
Essentially, the summary looks like this: For a long time, long-term care insurance wasn’t very good. Then, in the 1990s, it became almost too good to be true, with great benefits at a surprisingly low price. Those untenable policy benefits eventually led to higher premiums, though, along with a reduction in benefits and a dramatic consolidation of the available plans.
Today, we’re somewhere in between. There are fewer long-term care insurance plans available, and those that exist range from modestly helpful to moderately helpful — and never entirely sufficient on their own.
There is a tendency among some Americans to take out a long-term care insurance policy and decide that they’ve done everything they need to take care of themselves in old age. That’s far from the truth, and those people may be in for a rude awakening.
On the other hand, though, there is an equally misguided tendency in the industry to write off long-term care insurance altogether.
For some people, long-term care insurance can make sense as one piece in a larger advance planning puzzle. It’s all a question of timing, premium, benefits, and your personal needs and financial standing.
In other words, long-term care insurance remains an option worth considering, but it’s a very fact-specific inquiry.
If you’d like to know whether long-term care insurance might play a role in your own plans for the future, I’d be happy to talk about it. Give me a call today.