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Mechanics and Basics of LTC Rate Increases

November 10, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

I’m fond of this article about long-term care insurance (LTCi) rate hikes from The Society of Actuaries Long-Term Care newsletter.

Yes, I belong to the Society of Actuaries! I have for years. I’m in the LTCi section. I get a quarterly newsletter and try never to miss their annual conference. I normally can barely understand lots of their newsletter articles (which, unsurprisingly, are usually written by actuaries) because they’re so technical.

Once in a while, however, actuaries write articles that are accessible to non-professional mathematicians. “Mechanics and Basics of Long-Term Care Rate Increases” is an example of such a rare event.

Click here to read my prior blog about how and why LTCi rate hikes occur.

Any detail-oriented person interested in really understanding the inner working mechanisms of LTCi should read both my blog and this article.

Human-Caused Global Warming Is Here But Denied, Just Like LTC Odds

November 2, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

According to an article in the September-October issue of Audubon Magazine by Elizabeth Kolbert, who’s written the recently released “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,” 97% of all climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is happening.

According to a Pew Research Center Study done earlier this year asking Americans about their own beliefs in global warming, only 45% of us believe human activity was the main cause. And only 58% of us know that carbon dioxide is the gas most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise.

I am pretty fascinated by this denial of climate change. It parallels denial of the need for responsible long-term care planning in so many ways. I believe the psychological denial mechanism used to avoid believing in global warming is nearly identical to denial of the high probability of needing long-term care. Both are about avoidance of the most unpleasant facts. Both issues mandate discussion and education in order to understand them properly and to do something constructive about them.

Global warming has been in the press a lot lately and is now being given the credibility it deserves. Still, important discussions about it in Washington and most states is not occurring.

For most of the 25 years I’ve been selling long-term care insurance (LTCi), the press has often misrepresented the facts and typically led articles with a negative, inflammatory bias even when some truth follows. And financial pundits have often pooh-poohed the need for LTCi.

Recently, however, the press and pundits have begun to report affirmatively on the need for LTCi and responsible LTC planning. Still, not enough of us are following their lead. In coming years, there will be a lot of Baby Boomers and their families in turmoil and crisis due to unplanned needs for LTC.

Here’s a cool website called What We Know. Its purpose is to educate the public, which hopefully, will create better public policy concerning global warming. This site is produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The long-term care insurance (LTCi) industry has comparable, highly reputable sites with outstanding LTCi content and education. Here’s one: www.aaltci.org. Find links to several more, here.

No one seems to read these sites. Or perhaps they read them and there is some type of emotional disconnect, an inability to assimilate such inconvenient truths.

Nursing Home Infections Are Increasing…Surprise (Not!)

October 17, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Here’s an October 9, 2014 article from McKnight’s LTC News describing recently published findings that show across the board infection rates in nursing homes have surged during the past five years.

Quoting from the article, “The prevalence of viral hepatitis in nursing homes increased 48% between 2006 and 2010, the investigators determined. MDRO prevalence increased by 18% and pneumonia by 11%. The rates of urinary tract infections, septicemia and wound infections also rose.”

Here are several additional blogs I’ve done about Medicaid’s shortcomings. Because most long-term patients in nursing homes are on Medicaid (a form of Welfare), and because Medicaid’s reimbursement to nursing homes is actually less than the cost of caring for such patients, many nursing homes are unprofitable. We all agree that the most important employees in nursing homes are the custodial caregivers. These are the lowest paid people on the economic totem pole. Counter-intuitively, these critical frontline caregivers are often the first place nursing homes fire to cut expenses.

My opinion is that because of inadequate care in many Medicaid-funded nursing homes, corners are cut. Quality of care suffers. Sad outcomes then occur. This is what is causing the rapid rise of nursing home infections. It is not hard to connect the dots on this one.

Many nursing home patients end up in such facilities because they do not have money to access better care. People who own long-term care insurance (LTCi) are far less likely to wind up in Medicaid-funded nursing homes. They are far more likely to end up in preferable, far nicer assisted-living facilities.

New Report Exposes High Costs Associated Dearth of Dignified Death

October 13, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

Last week, reporting on the largely broken, slippery slope of costly, undignified end-of-life outcomes too many families experience, broke in the news.

The news reported on a 21-member nonpartisan committee that was part of the National Academy of Sciences. This committee just released a report calling for sweeping changes in end-of-life care.

Many of the recommended changes could be accomplished without legislation. Other recommendations are just common sense AND would save a lot of money.

Here’s a summary of the recommendations:

Reimburse health care providers for conversations on advanced care planning.
Restructure Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care delivery programs.
Eliminate perverse financial incentives that encourage expensive hospital procedures when low-tech services like pain management and home health care are available.
Finally, accredited medical schools and groups as well as health providers should greatly increase training in palliative care.

My opinion is these changes cannot happen soon enough. I hope such reporting, accompanied by public outrage, continues.

Failure to Plan for LTC Akin to Denial of Climate Change

September 26, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

It felt almost revelatory to realize the nearly perfect correlation between climate change deniers and people who refuse to plan responsibly for their long-term care.

Both denials appear to involve active refusal to accept facts.

According to one of many sources you may know (Google), the majority of us (77% in this instance), believe in global warming. That’s a strong majority.

This is approximately the same percentage of Baby Boomers who are concerned about their ability to pay for long-term care, depending on the study you read.

All reputable sources predict that 70% of us reaching age 65 will need long-term care at some point in our lives.

Fewer than one-third of us have saved for long-term care.

According to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, only about ten percent of us who are age and income-appropriate own long-term care insurance (LTCi).

The facts are conclusive, there’s an 8,000 pound elephant of long-term care in the room.

Here’s additional information on how unwise it is to deny the need for long-term care planning.

In the case of long-term care denial, I can give you one story after another about otherwise well-educated, affluent friends, who can afford LTCi premiums, have had first-hand experience being a caregiver, and who would be catastrophically affected if they need care for anything but a short period of time.

If I hadn’t seen in excess of 300 of the LTCi policies I’ve sold during the past 25 years pay off for my clients, if I hadn’t seen the transformative difference LTCi ownership makes, if I hadn’t been often thanked by clients for selling them their LTCi, I might almost be amused by the excuses people give me for not being willing to discuss long-term care planning with me.

I can understand hoping for the best, waging a fierce battle against the odds, and cultivation of an ever-present positive attitude. These things are helpful. This is not the same as denial. Denial is a straightforward avoidance of, a refusal to accept the facts. Such denial often leads to tragic outcomes.

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Mechanics and Basics of LTC Rate Increases

Human-Caused Global Warming Is Here But Denied, Just Like LTC Odds

Nursing Home Infections Are Increasing…Surprise (Not!)

New Report Exposes High Costs Associated Dearth of Dignified Death

Failure to Plan for LTC Akin to Denial of Climate Change

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