Long Term Care Insurance Expert | Honey Leveen | Houston, TX
Helping you make informed LTC decisions
Falls are the #1 cause of injury among seniors; they are a slippery slope to decline, but with appropriate care, can often be avoided. Many people do not report them.
This article describes what I routinely observe in my practice. LTCi ownership can make accessing appropriate, high quality care quicker, less stressful, and easier.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/falls-leading-cause-of-injury-and-death-among-older-americans/
This past month I’ve come across a few articles describing Medicaid’s woes, and highlighting peoples need to plan for funding their own long-term care, now!
This Washington Post story describes why our system is incentivized to discharge patients when they are still very needy, but their Medicare-paid re-hab benefits are exhausted. Medicaid can then often pick up costs, but it pays facilities poorly. This incentivizes facilities to admit the least needful and costly patients. In addition, “The Medicaid system is overly cumbersome and too slow to provide benefits.”
The true heroines of long-term care, paid home care providers, earn an average of $10.11 an hour, states this September New York Times article. About a third of these caregivers rely on food stamps and 28% rely on Medicaid for health insurance. Annual caregiver job turnover rate is 40-60 percent.
The article continues by stating caregivers at Medicaid-funded facilities got their pay raised to minimum wage: $7.15 per hour last year. Such caregivers are often overwhelmed with the sheer number of patients they must care for. “Ms. Walker left her job at a nearby nursing home because “sometimes you had 12 to 15 people to take care of,” she said. “You’re trying to feed everybody, give them baths, but a lot of people got neglected.”
This testimonial about Medicaid’s flaws on the receiving end of care is heart-wrenching, “When Roy Potter was weakened from postpolio syndrome and his wife, Joan, could no longer help him out of bed, a nursing home was “unthinkable,” said Ms. Potter, 83.
For a year, they paid private aides $14 an hour to come to their home in Mount Kisco, N.Y. When they could no longer afford that, Mr. Potter qualified for Medicaid, which pays the preponderance of home care costs in this country.
Over the next two and a half years, more than a dozen agency aides — some caring and competent; some not; some disappearing without explanation — cycled through their home, as did a number of short-term substitutes.
“A new person would come, and I’d have to walk them through everything all over again,” Ms. Potter said.
She grew increasingly anxious about whether an aide would show up. “Every morning I’d hold my breath until the doorbell rang,” she said. “Several times, I had to get in the car and drive to the agency and say, ‘Who is coming today?’”
Last year, when federal overtime provisions took effect, the agency cut back helpers’ hours.
She and her children succeeded in keeping Mr. Potter at home until he died in April, at 86, but finding and keeping help proved a continual battle.
The following is a guest blog by my friend and highly respected LTCi colleague, Ron Hagelman, who can be reached at rhagelman@broadtowerinsurance.com, www.BroadtowerInsurance.com.
The article laments the undeserved, unintended ill-will earned by the LTCi industry. Ron’s sentiment matches my own and expresses the widespread confidence of LTCi actuaries that LTCi pricing is now extremely rate stable. Here are blogs I’ve written about rate hikes.
Here is info on the Society of Actuaries study Ron refers to. Thanks, Ron, for allowing me to re-publish this.
“There are simply those who, even after repeated exposure to the glare of the truth, are subsequently unable to admit they were wrong. Our industry suffers seriously from this flaw in human behavior. Far too many have conveniently pointed the finger of blame at those responsible for our lifeless interest environment (whoever those people are) and not taken sufficient responsibility for the “mistakes” that were made in our past pricing assumptions. “We” got it way wrong and the damage done to all concerned is much more extensive than many are willing to admit. Stand-alone LTCI sales are a shadow of their former selves. The destruction to new sales caused by repeated rate increases is pervasive and insidious. We have unfortunately created a general public malaise and aversion to all things LTCI both in terms of those who we said were the smart ones for leveraging their risk early and those prospective buyers considering the security of policy ownership. What is of course much worse is that we have successfully decimated the ranks of those willing to help sell the product. The age-old equation is now painfully obvious to all concerned: rising premium creating falling sales culminating in a drastically reduced field force. This artificially created sales spiral is much more than just a self-fulfilling prophecy. We must first admit that it is also a self-inflicted wound.
We must first freely admit and acknowledge our own culpability. Frankly, we over built benefits, underpriced mortality and morbidity, and overestimated potential sales in the initial rush to achieve market share. We completely missed the whole side of the barn in terms of persistency and honestly we were basing our future experience on far too little actual claims data.
“Ding Dong the Wicked (Rate Increase) Witch is Dead!” The Society of Actuaries has recently completed a research project designed specifically to evaluate the historical potential for rate increases. The research clearly indicates that products priced today are much less likely to have future rate increases. What is absolutely certain over the last 15 years is that the need for long term care services and support, the growth of assets and income needing protection, and the certainty of a need for expensive care is now greater than ever. We have also accumulated a substantial volume of claims information upon which to more accurately base current pricing.
The conclusion of the SOA analysis is that confidence in current pricing “should” be at an all-time high. Claims data is no longer scarce. We have an abundance of claims to evaluate at this time, meaning we have reduced the potential likelihood of future rate actions. According to the SOA, “Premium stability on today’s LTCI prod- ucts is at its highest.” The SOA identified a number of benefits of the new pricing stability as the study found that, “Claim experience nationwide in 2014 was 70 times more credible than in 2000.” The fact that we now have a history to evaluate has laid the groundwork for future carrier optimism concerning this market. Pricing stability contributes to:
Restoration of consumer confidence at this point is a massive undertaking.
The Study also illuminated the validity of what we knew were serious contributing factors:
What is important is that we have learned from our experience and that the relative predictability of current premiums has risen from a low of a 40 percent chance of a future need to raise premiums to only 10 percent today. The study also pointed out that the regulatory environment has provided evolving strength by implementing the necessity of providing adequate margins for adverse circumstances under the NAIC Model Regulations beginning in 2000 and subsequently enhanced in 2009 and 2014.
The journey now standing before us must certainly begin by joining hands with those new friends willing to take that first step on the yellow brick road as we must ask the wizard to help us restore the faith of consumers and agents alike. Together we must recognize that we have indeed survived the flying monkeys and that our strength of purpose to find a home for the risk that will not be ignored was always built upon our brains, our heart and our courage.
Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.”
Here’s an example of pundits getting long-term care insurance (LTCi) very, very wrong. Wrong to the point that it is harmful to the public because it dissuades people from considering LTCi by using false information.
The author turned to “one sharp advisor” who is unfortunately not well educated in LTCi and as a result, advised self-insuring. This is bad advice. Too many advisors fail to understand that the primary benefit of LTCi is rapid, worry- and stress-free access to long-term care without hesitation and without fear of threatening the health, financial, or emotional status of their loved ones. “One sharp advisor” and the author do not mention these benefits. All they are concerned about is wealth preservation, which is a secondary consideration.
The author, Richard Eisenberg, also picked an LTCi agent named Irv, to make LTCi recommendations. Here’s what Irv did wrong. He said, “…my wife and I would need to spend an hour with him on the phone so he could ask us some questions.” Health questions should never take more than a few minutes…period. They should never be the conversational focus point. Irv went on to say that “…if I chose to wait five more years to buy the policy he recommended from Mutual of Omaha, I’d be rejected. That company won’t sell long-term care coverage to someone who has had diabetes for 20 years.” This is a false, manipulative, scare tactic. Irv is an embarrassment to my profession.
Mr. Eisenberg wrote eloquently about why it is very important for him to own LTCi. I feel sorry for Mr. Eisenberg because of the poor advice that he received from both parties. He is a very smart guy, evidently very in touch with his feelings and the realities of what long-term care entails. I fear that doubt about his decision to abort his search for reasonably priced long-term care insurance will grow through the years and will haunt him during retirement.
The last way to find a good LTCi agent is through direct mail, as Mr. Eisenberg did. Try your friends, colleagues, and the internet first. Visit agent websites before you call. This is how ALL my clients find me.
Wade Pfau, a noted financial advisor with more credentials than “one sharp advisor”, gets LTCi right. Smart financial advisors do.
What a pity. Many people are harmed by published falsehoods about LTCi.
In August Jim and I got to tour some very beautiful (and cooler) parts of Michigan in advance of attending Jim’s nephew’s wedding in Grand Rapids. Jim then flew home from MI while I stayed and met a colleague, who arranged a tour for me of the home office of LifeSecure Insurance Company in Brighton, MI. LifeSecure is one of my favorite long-term care insurance carriers.
From there, my colleague and I flew on to Kansas City for the annual meeting of the elite long-term care insurance (LTCi) producers group I work with. Our meeting was extremely intense and worthwhile. The days featured back-to-back carrier and peer presentations, followed almost immediately by a hard-to-forget, fun, social event. We worked hard, we played hard, we learned a lot, we had great fun. I was away about two weeks. I would not have traded one single second of my trip but I was also very happy to be home and have Jim greet me at the airport upon my return.
"Honey - Whenever I need a clarification regarding our “LTC” you are “Johnny on the spot” responding in a very prompt manner, reassuring me, informing me in a concise way, patient with me as I massage the understanding in my own words. Your knowledge is current and expressed with confidence, offered in your conscientious and upbeat personality. 
It is a pleasure to work with you. Thank you for your expertise." ~ Nancy Damon, Houston, TX
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Here’s how to reach me:
Honey Leveen, LUTCF, CLTC, LTCP
“The Queen, by Self-Proclamation, of Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCi)”
404 Royal Bonnet
Ft. Myers, FL 33908
Phone: 713-988-4671
Fax: 281-829-7177
Email: honey@honeyleveen.com
Email: honey@honeyleveen.com