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November is National Long Term Care Awareness Month

November 5, 2019 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

November is upon us which means… It’s Long Term Care Awareness Month! And time for my annual awareness-raising post. Just kidding! Most of my posts are about raising awareness. 😉

This isn’t just another “Hallmark Holiday”. Long Term Care Awareness Month was created by Congress in 2001. They recognize how important it is to bring this topic into the American conversation. Since then, several governors and mayors have also joined the campaign to highlight this important information campaign.

When it comes to being able to afford often catastrophically expensive long term care (LTC) costs, many of us are unprepared. Our government will not be able to adequately bear the costs of providing LTC. Long term care insurance costs are often a fraction of actual long term care costs.

Measuring Long Term Care Awareness

In 2017, Genworth Financial conducted a survey to see how informed Americans were on the costs, options and even the need for long term care. Participants in the survey shared that their greatest fear about aging was “not having enough money to pay for long term care.” Despite this fear (or maybe because of it? See past blog, “Indecision Paralysis“), only one in five of the respondents had any plan in place to pay for those future medical costs.

The survey found that at least part of this lack of planning is due to misunderstanding what kind of costs could be in their future and which of those costs would be covered by government programs.

“Two out of three adults expect government programs to partially or fully cover the costs of their long term care services, despite the fact that Medicare pays for only limited care and Medicaid has strict financial eligibility requirements. In addition, both programs have come under increasing funding pressure.”

When it came to the purpose of long term care insurance (LTCi):

62% did not understand what LTCi covers
61% didn’t know that LTCi can, among other benefits, help create personalized care plans and locate quality care providers

November is Perfect Timing

Many families spend more time together this time of year. This is a great time to start asking questions and exploring your options together. After all, the decisions you make today will affect your entire family in the future.

Genworth has a wonderful resource to guide family members through this unfamiliar territory. Their “Conversation Starters” can help you navigate though uncomfortable topics like wills, power of attorney, and health care directives. There’s also questions about lifestyle and preferences for medical care options.

November is the perfect month to protect you and your loved ones by building a financial plan. Proper planning can help you access the care you’ll need and will make the quality of life you envision a real possibility.

Click here to receive a free, no-obligation quote for your own LTCi policy.

Long-Term Care Insurance is Good for America!

April 9, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

I want to share part of a powerful address that Tom McInerney delivered at the recent Society of Actuaries Long-Term Care Conference. His talk had great impact on me.

Mr. McInerney is the CEO of Genworth Financial, a leader in the long-term care insurance (LTCi) marketplace. He stated the federal government faces at least $40-70 trillion in entitlement liabilities (Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid). A 2009 GAO Report supports a $45 trillion number. A more recent Heritage Foundation report estimates $45 trillion for Social Security and Medicare alone. All three of these programs are “Pay-As-You-Go”, which means they need to be paid for through current payroll or income taxes.

Our current federal tax revenues are $2.7T per year (see CBO Report FY 2013 estimate). If you add $40 – 70 trillion of entitlement to our existing $17 trillion deficit, even a doubling of taxes, which would further slow our economy, wouldn’t put much of a dent on the public sector’s true liabilities of $60 – 80 trillion! To add to this dilemma, we currently have a ratio of fewer than three workers per retiree supporting Social Security. According to the Social Security Administration, this ratio gets worse every day.

Let me add that our legislators know that Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid need reform urgently. But for their own reasons, neither party will broach this subject. I have blogged about this here and here. With each passing day, the entitlement crisis grows worse, and Mr. McInerney states that counseling that we should rely exclusively on a taxpayer-funded solution to pay for long-term care in the US is irresponsible. I don’t think it’s irresponsible. I think it is off-the-deep end unrealistic and irrational to believe publicly paid long-term care is possible! Yet such irrational, “feel good” solutions seem to prevail.

Here’s a blog that gives an example of the prevalence of such irrational points of view. It’s called “Reaming Diane Rehm“. During her show on long-term care, Diane Rehm paid most of her attention to a supporter of government paid long-term care. She did not have a single representative of the insurance industry on this show, yet plenty of time was spent smashing and bashing LTCi. I pointed out some of the many false and irrational statements made on this show in a professionally written letter I sent to Diane Rehm by surface mail and email; I never even got an acknowledgement from her or her staff.

Meanwhile, Americans haven’t saved enough to cover their long-term care costs. The private long-term care insurance market can’t cover everybody, but it can cover some of us. The more LTCi policies issued, the less pressure on Medicaid budgets and other entitlement spending in the future.

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November is National Long Term Care Awareness Month

Measuring Long Term Care Awareness

November is Perfect Timing

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