Uncategorized Archives - Page 4 of 8 - Long Term Care Insurance Expert | Honey Leveen

Assisted Living is Better Than Staying Home

July 28, 2018 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

For about 25 years, I’ve been telling people assisted living is a better solution if there’s a late in life, chronic need for long-term care.

As you can imagine, I’ve met with a lot of resistance about this over the years. This feels like a very emotional decision to leave the “independence” of living in your own home and opting to live in an assisted living facility. However, if you take the time to look at the facts, you’ll understand my position. To fully understand the decision requires the ability to fearlessly envision a time when they are no longer strong, active and independent. And that time is coming for most of us.

A new study backs me up on this. Vindication is a lovely feeling!

The Preference for Assisted Living

A new poll conducted by Key Private Bank was reported on by McKnight’s Senior Living. Of those polled, the conclusion is that if older adults are independent and able to remain at home, that is their natural preference. At the point where this is no longer safe or feasible, their first choice, by a landslide, is assisted living. The public is finally catching on to this.

Some of you, eager to stay in your home at any cost might be considering the option for home healthcare. Where 93% of respondents would choose assisted living once they could no longer care for themselves, only 11% preferred home healthcare. They understand the unnecessary burden that home care places on family and friends. Plus, the standard of care in assisted living is higher and more consistent.

By the way, some policyholders choose long term care insurance coverage that doesn’t cover home care, which significantly reduces their monthly premiums. Why pay for something you won’t want to use?

Imagine…

Imagine a scenario where you’re living alone. Maybe you’re married but you’re both at an advanced age. You no longer have the balance, strength or stamina from your younger years. You reach a point where you are at risk for falls stepping in or out of the shower. Perhaps you also need a tiny bit of help to avoid falls. Or some help getting up from chairs or getting your pants on. You might be at the point where you have dementia and are starting to make faulty decisions, placing you or your loved ones in danger. Maybe you decide to take an ill-advised walk and you can’t remember how to get back home.

In a reputable assisted living facility, you are

safer
less likely to experience abuse or fraud
at decreased risk for falls
able to live with less fear about your well-being
more socially stimulated and carefree

If you own LTC insurance (LTCi) and are at the point where you need assistance in basic, daily tasks, your LTCi will be gushing money, waiting to give you the support. Your LTCi is your passport, with readily-accessible funds to access high quality care when needed. Hopefully, you’ll use your policy. If you’re like many of my policyholders, prompt, easy access to care, when it’s needed, will give you more dignity, safety, security, and options.

If you don’t own a LTCi policy, click here to receive your personal quote.

The Bad News About Long Term Care Insurance

June 21, 2018 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Isn’t that an eye-catching headline? It’s human nature to be drawn to bad news, addressing or even causing panic in the general public. And the media knows it, which is why they are motivated to share the very worst-case scenarios without exploring more common experiences.

Selling the Bad News

Here’s a short story that NBC recently ran, highlighting a couple’s worst dreams coming true. Their Long Term Care insurance (LTCi) premiums experienced noteworthy rate hikes. The couple’s story creates sympathy and also promotes fear among an uninformed public that would likely benefit from the benefits of LTCi coverage.

The story shared is absolutely true and the situation is difficult for the featured couple.

BUT IT’S NOT THE WHOLE STORY

Here are some facts that they forgot to share:

Older policies (written before 1996) were very robust and fully-featured. And yes, the rates charged were based on estimates that have proven to be faulty.
Holders of these older policies sometimes need to downgrade benefits to offset rising premiums. However, even with downgraded coverage, they still have higher benefits than a comparable policy has today.

How to Spread the Good News

Perhaps another reason for poor media coverage is due to a shortage of trained LTCi specialists. Before stories like the one from NBC is publicized, it would be helpful to get some insights from the industry experts, who were (of course) not consulted for this article. My clients know how to contact me with any and all questions about their policies. If they receive a rate hike notice, we have an honest conversation including:

What caused the rate hike?
Is likely to happen again and, if so, how often?
Can they afford to maintain their current coverage?
What is the most effective strategy going forward?

A respected colleague, Margie Barrie, wrote this piece that gives an informed response to the rate hikes some of her clients have experienced. The industry has gathered better data over decades of experience. Companies now know that once we purchase our LTCi policy, almost nobody ever drops it. More people than anticipated are collecting from their LTCi, for longer lengths of time.

In that article, Barrie also addresses the possibility of future rate hikes. On older policies, they could be more likely. But we can always find ways to ameliorate them, if necessary.

You Get to Decide

When you see some bad news about LTCi, please reach out to someone you trust to give you the full story. My clients rely on me for the truth.

If you’re ready to begin this conversation, let’s get started! Click here to receive your no-obligation quote for your personal LTCi policy.

Curing Alzheimer’s – Part 1 (Funding the Research is Tricky)

June 1, 2018 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Dementia is the umbrella term for the symptoms some older adults experience as they slowly lose their sense of self and their cognitive abilities. Alzheimer’s disease causes about 60% – 80% of dementia. In the United States, someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 66 seconds. When do we get to the task of curing Alzheimer’s?

By the year 2050, we expect to live past 80. We see the need for a cure continue to grow, but the funding for research of Alzheimer’s is shrinking.

Before they can even test potential cures, scientists must be able to identify appropriate test subjects. I’ve written past blogs about the importance of early diagnosis. Once patients are fully symptomatic, curing Alzheimer patients become less likely. So the focus of Alzheimer’s research is finding people in the early stages of the disease.

3 Hurdles to Curing Alzheimer’s

Health and Science reporter, Katherine Ellen Foley, shares the 3 major challenges in getting new drugs to market:

Doctors can’t see evidence of the disease until it’s too advanced to cure. By the time cognitive issues show up, the neurons have already been damaged beyond repair. The drugs simply do not exist to reverse the conditions that may have been building over the last 10-20 years.
There are no reliable tests for the early stages. There is a danger in prescribing Alzheimer’s medication to someone suffering memory loss due to other forms of dementia or aging. However, scientists have identified the amyloid plaques that cause all the damage and are in the earliest stages of creating a blood test to find these early markers.
Scientists can’t gather enough test asymptomatic test subjects for an effective long-term study. The good news is that researchers are now working with the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network. These people are genetically guaranteed to show Alzheimer’s symptoms in their 40s and 50s. While this is only a sliver of the population (only about 1% of all Alzheimer’s patients), it’s a good starting place.

Pharmaceutical Companies Don’t See the ROI

Of course, all of this research requires funding. Historically, the pharmaceutical industry has been behind a lot of medical research, expecting to recover costs through future drug sales.

Many studies have found early lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, social engagement) to play a role in reducing the risk for developing Alzheimer’s. As Foley reports, “Without the promise of a big payoff, it’s doubtful pharmaceutical companies will fund studies to explore lifestyle interventions.”

We are banking on the research efforts in the science community to find some practical results for curing Alzheimer’s disease. With or without the medication, it is important that we each prepare for our own lifestyles in our later years. I’m happy to report that my clients with Long Term Care insurance (LTCi) have built their own safety net that will enable them and their family members some peace of mind.

Click here to receive your customized quote for your own LTCi policy.

Genworth’s New Cost of Care Study Is Out!

January 15, 2018 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

10/20/2018 , “This retirement expense has hit $100,000 annually — and it’s continuing to rise,” by Darla Mercado, CNBC

Quote: “This retirement living expense has nowhere to go but up. The annual cost of a private room in a nursing home has cracked the six-figure mark, according to Genworth Financial. The national annual median cost of a private room in a nursing home is $100,375, the insurer found in its 2018 Cost of Care study. Overall, the rising cost of care has outpaced inflation. The Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers was 2.1 percent for the first half of 2018. The annual median cost of a room at an assisted living facility grew by 6.67 percent between 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, the cost of a shared room in a nursing home jumped by 4.11 percent. … Discuss with your advisor whether a long-term care insurance policy or life insurance with a long-term care feature might be right for you.”

Do You Really Want to Depend on Medicaid for Your Long Term Care?

January 15, 2018 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

What does government-paid long-term care actually provide? And just how effective is that care?

The New York Times reports that “Since 2013, nearly 6,500 nursing homes — four of every 10 — have been cited at least once for a serious violation, federal records show. Medicaid has fined two-thirds of those homes. Common citations include failing to protect residents from avoidable accidents, neglect, mistreatment and bedsores.”

Many health care advocates support these penalties as effective plans to monitor and maintain acceptable levels of care. Objections from the nursing home industry, however, have resulted in a significant reduction in these fines. The industry’s main trade group, The American Health Care Association, complained that the federal inspectors focused excessively on catching wrongdoing rather than helping nursing homes improve.

As a result, the federal government is now scaling back the use of fines against nursing homes that harm residents or place them in grave risk of injury. The new guidelines discourage regulators from levying fines in some situations, even when they have resulted in a resident’s death.

Burning the Medicaid Candle

We seem to be burning the Medicare – Medicaid Candle from both ends. Medicare and Medicaid fund most of U.S. nursing home care. We know they are not an endless well of money. On the patient side, Medicaid doesn’t pay enough per patient day for nursing homes to provide good care. Medicaid-funded nursing homes cannot hire enough caregivers, because they cannot pay them enough.

As my colleague Stephen Moses aptly describes, “Beatings will continue until morale improves!”

Many people expect Medicaid-funded nursing home facilities to provide them with long-term care. Medicaid eligibility requires asset spend down. In addition, quality of care is dependent on our financial resources. People who own long term care insurance (LTCi) have necessary funds and are far more likely to be able to avoid Medicaid, stay at home, or access quality assisted living if they need long term care.

Click here to receive your personal quote for Long Term Care Insurance coverage.

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