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Today’s Long-Term Care Policies Are Well Priced

April 18, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

Good Value For MoneyThe March, 2016 edition of Broker World Magazine features an article called “Reflecting On Rates – Examining The Outlook of Today’s LTCI Pricing” written by two actuaries, Marc Glickman and Laury Falter, both of www.LifeCareAssurance.com. I can email this article to you.

They state that there is strong evidence of significant and mostly unrecognized safety in current long-term care insurance (LTCi) pricing, as a result of the Society of Actuaries Pricing Project, a very long range study.

They explain “LTCi pricing is now more conservative than ever because interest rates are at historical lows. Lapse rates have been effectively de-risked, and both mortality and morbidity reflect more conservative best estimates.”

The odds of suffering oppressive, frequent rate hikes on today’s LTCi policies are very low. The article goes on to back up these claims.

Of interest is a new trend caused by improved mortality and morbidity, meaning LTCi policyholders are dying, getting sick, and filing claims later than expected.

Only about 22 % of all LTCi claims are caused by Alzheimer’s Disease or other dementias. However, the article states that over half of all LTCi claim costs are due to Alzheimer’s or dementia.

Today’s LTCi policies are more lenient than ever. Buyers can expect very stable rates going forward!

Filed Under: Helpful Information About LTC, I'll Just Self-Insure, Information About LTC Tagged With: Alzheimers Disease, Laury Falter, Long Term Care insurance, LTCi, LTCi rate hikes, Marc Glickman

TX Nursing Home Employees Quitting to Work at McDonald’s

April 12, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

Fast FoodAccording to reporters at Lubbock’s KLBK13, in a story titled, Nurses Quit Texas Nursing Homes to Work at McDonald’s, we face a dire shortage of nursing home beds by the end of this decade.

Nursing home employees, particularly certified nurse assistants, who are “front line” caregivers, get the worst pay, typically about $8/hour.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s is hiring, and they pay significantly more. Furthermore, their employees don’t have to mess with bed pans or risk injuries from transferring patients.

The story says TX nursing homes lose approximately $300 million per year. 85 percent of TX nursing home residents depend on Medicaid or Medicare. Each Medicaid patient is underfunded by 14 percent.

This dovetails with information I just received from Seven Acres, the Jewish nursing home here in Houston. Their April 2016 newsletter says, “Over 80% of our residents are so ill and indigent that they qualify for the state Medicaid program, which underfunds Seven Acres by $33,000 a year for each Medicaid resident. This translates into a $8 million annual loss for the Home. It is only through the generous support of our friends and community partners that we are able to offset the significant cost of care that Medicaid does not cover.”

Long-term care insurance (LTCi) ownership greatly increases the odds people will not receive care in a nursing home. Even the very best nursing homes – like Seven Acres – struggle with staffing shortages.

I’ve already sent Seven Acres my annual contribution.

Filed Under: Denial, Elephant in the Room, Helpful Information About LTC, I'll Just Self-Insure, Information About LTC Tagged With: Fast Food, home care, home health care, McDonald's, Medicaid, Medicare, nursing home care, Nursing Homes, Seven Acres Nursing Home

Honey’s State of the LTCi Industry

March 21, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

Honey Sally Tobe Betty at ILTCII’ve just returned from the Society of Actuaries 16th annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference a few days ago.

I believe most attendees left the conference feeling more enthused about the future of long-term care insurance (LTCi) than we have in a while.

New carriers are entering the market. I got to preview National Guardian Life’s new LTCi policy, due for release this Spring. I am told its rates will be competitive and it will have some “sweet spots.” It’s an exciting plan and has some innovative, very attractive “spins” on traditional features.

Additional new products are entering the market, too!

My sentiment, and I believe that of the majority of attendees, is that the worst is over. Interest rate assumptions can’t be lower. Lapse rates, mortality and morbidity (how many policyholders will die or need LTC) have already been adjusted for “worst case,” hyper-conservative scenarios.

Long-term studies based on extensive experience & appropriate adjustments have convinced actuaries that the current generation of LTCi products are and will be very rate-stable.

The new, asset-based (also called “hybrid” or “combo”) LTC products are now mature, excellent products.

We now have a broader portfolio of rate-stable LTC solutions, reasonably priced, than ever before.

The press, this past year, has done excellent reporting on why Medicare and Medicaid cannot and will not pay for our LTC. Media has reported well on the high odds of needing LTC and the heartbreak patients and families often suffer due to unplanned LTC needs.

Demographically, there remains a huge, underserved market of Boomers and others who are unprepared and vulnerable to the “spending shock” of having an unplanned LTC need.

Some things have not changed in the 25+ years I’ve been working with LTCi. The public is still steeped in profound denial about their need for LTC. People would rather pay for fun things like travel and other toys than face the facts about needing LTC. There are still misinformed journalists who describe LTCi coverage erroneously, and inaccurately harp on wanton LTC rate hikes.

Filed Under: Denial, Elephant in the Room, Helpful Information About LTC, I'll Just Self-Insure, Information About LTC Tagged With: annuity-based LTC, asset based LTC, Long Term Care insurance, long-term care, LTCi, Medicaid, Medicare, Spending Shock

Elder Orphanism

March 17, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

Elder OrphanismWe will be reading more about elder orphans. Even if we have a slew of kids, we are likely to wind up as elder orphans. We must plan for this right now.

Here is a link to a beautiful column describing what the future is likely to look like.

Thanks to the author, Dave Nesbit, for allowing me to re-publish this.

“New Year’s Day is a time to turn the page on our bad habits and start new and positive behaviors.

Here’s a challenge of what self-interested baby boomers should resolve to do now—reach out with personal compassion and respect to younger people. This might seem to be inverted thinking from “respect your elders.”

Over the last century, progress in transportation and technology enabled the settling of our vast country and made the intergenerational family farm all but obsolete. Maybe your children, as mine, are now adults who have relocated outside of our geographic area to fill the labor needs of America’s expanding economy. As 20th century labor mobility has undercut traditional family life, affordable cellphone plans appeared in response.

In 1915, a 3-minute coast-to-coast phone call cost $20.70, which was 3 percent of the $687 average annual income. By 1940, that same call cost $3, when the average house rented for only $30 per month. By 1970, the 70-cent cost was the same as a McDonald’s quarter-pounder. Now the insignificant cost of a lengthy call, along with Skype, might deceive us into believing that our family needs are fulfilled by inexpensive communication. They aren’t.

Today’s communication is not much more meaningful than when I as a child chimed in “Hello Grandma, I love you” during a 3-minute call. Fifty years ago, Bell Telephone advertised that “long distance is the next best thing to being there.” Maybe it is, but it’s a “poor second” and an inadequate balm for the loneliness and vulnerability of older persons who are distant from their family’s younger generations.

When I was growing up, my mother “adopted” three widows who shared special times with our family. Those surrogates helped to fill the void of absent biological grandparents, who I rarely saw. Until she was in college, our daughter did not realize how lucky she was to grow up in the same town with two sets of grandparents who she saw often and knew well.

Especially since our children live out of state, I’m glad that my wife and I own long-term care insurance and have colleagues at Keystone Elder Law. Both will be great assets when aging causes us to become frail, and we need to develop and implement a caregiving plan. It certainly would be a healthy supplement if a surrogate, family-like relationship would develop outside of our organizational environment.

I have witnessed such an intergenerational relationship develop among members of a service club, when one is missing a parent/grandparent(s) and another is missing a child/grandchild(ren). Similarly, such relationships can originate naturally among neighbors. Churches that seek a means to translate scripture into practice could encourage and nurture intergenerational surrogate families.

Pennsylvania rewards live-in caregivers. The state initiates an action during probate to recover Medicaid funds paid to provide care in a nursing home. However, live-in caregivers who do not own their own home and who lived with an unrelated frail person for at least two years prior to that person relocating to a nursing home, may inherit the home free of any estate recovery.

In his futuristic novel titled “2030,” Albert Brooks suggests that, by that date, the national debt will have outpaced the gross national product, medical breakthroughs with cancer and other diseases will enable longer life expectancy, and older persons will be confined in worn-out and all-but-forgotten cruise ships that are anchored off the West Coast. Young people, who work harder and receive less, will be incited to form gangs and become violent against older people, who seem selfish to them.

Could surrogate families be a possible antidote for both the intergenerational separation caused by mobility, and the pessimistic clash between the young and old as told in Brooks’ novel?

Over the past half century, the American melting pot has blended Catholics and Protestants, and Christians and Jews, into neighborhoods and families. Is it too hopeful to imagine that Judeo-Christian families and neighborhoods will assimilate peaceful Muslims? Would acts of kindness from Judeo-Christians to vulnerable younger Americans not only lead to surrogate families, but also make our younger generation less vulnerable for recruitment by radicals who promote terrorism?

As my wife and I visited our children and grandchildren in south Florida over Thanksgiving, I observed a significant number of interracial families. This contrasted with my recent, sad experiences with a couple of families in which a parent had alienated their child decades ago because of an interracial relationship. Could it be that racial intolerance within families is waning as rapidly as the relevance of the cost of a long-distance call?

The legislature and courts have forced a legal settlement of most of the controversial sexual preference issues. Is Brooks correct that the emerging issue for the 21st century will be the young versus the old? According to a Pew Foundation study, the declining percentage of Americans who are younger than age 15 will cross over the growing percentage of Americans who are over age 65, at the number of 20 percent, just before the year 2030.

How will the legislature and courts manage public resources and entitlements, when fewer younger people are available to support the larger number of older people who live longer? Will life-prolonging drugs be provided to the poor? Will Medicare have maximum lifetime benefit? Will the cost of long-term care for seniors deplete Medicaid funding for young families and children? Will the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia be considered seriously?

Politicians have kicked the can of painfully real solutions into the future. Our children will be taxed excessively, not only to repay escalating public debt created by our generation, but also to pay for entitlement programs to take care of aging baby boomers. Be proactive about this dilemma.

If not out of shear kindness, then in recognition of your probable future long-term care needs, create a surrogate family. Find younger people in your neighborhood, service club or church to befriend graciously now. Maybe they will respond in kind to manage and advocate for your care in the future.”

Filed Under: Denial, Elephant in the Room, I'll Just Self-Insure, Information About LTC, The Magic of owning long-term care insurance Tagged With: Baby Boomers, Better Homes and Gardens, Boomers, Elder Orphanism, elder orphans, home care, Information About LTC, long-term care, Medicaid

Extraordinary Story of Devotion…and No LTCi

March 14, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

Helping Mother Bathe
Elizabeth helps her mother bathe.
Mark Makela for The New York Times

A story in yesterday’s New York Times titled “Living With the Parents I’m Losing to Alzheimer’s blew me away. I hope non-subscribers can open it.

Here’s the accompanying slideshow.

The story is about Elizabeth Wolf, a very generous, candid, public person with a blog at www.upsidedowndaughter.com.

Read the column or blog to learn that five years ago Ms. Wolf was enjoying young adulthood and exciting new pursuits when she gave them up and returned home to become her parents’ primary caregiver. Both parents have Alzheimer’s Disease. She’s doing this with the help of her extremely devoted husband.

We know from graphic, detailed information in the story about finances and day-to-day coping, neither parent owns long-term care insurance (LTCi).

If you’re like me, you are forced to wonder how extremely different Ms. Wolf’s life and relationships with her husband and parents would be if one or both parents owned LTCi.

Filed Under: Denial, Elephant in the Room, Helpful Information About LTC, I'll Just Self-Insure, Information About LTC, New York Times Tagged With: Elizabeth Wolf, Long Term Care insurance, long-term care, LTC, LTCi, Medicare, Paula Span

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Honey Leveen, LUTCF, CLTC, LTCP
“The Queen, by Self-Proclamation, of Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCi)”
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Phone: 713-988-4671
Fax: 281-829-7177

Email: honey@honeyleveen.com

Email: honey@honeyleveen.com

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