Medicare Archives - Long Term Care Insurance Expert | Honey Leveen

How Good Food Can Help Your Finances

September 24, 2019 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

While researching the value of nutrition on our long term care benefits (“Eating for Life — An LTCi Benefit“), I came across a powerful infographic. There was so much important information in that image, I decided it needed its own blog post. I want to highlight all the great points made.

Many people spend their time and energy looking to solve their health issues with multiple prescriptions. But some of the easiest answers can be found in the foods we eat on a regular basis.

The Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University has launched a Public Impact Initiative to address the “nutrition crisis” found across our nation. They are bringing the full power of their research to help create awareness and change. They are targeting farming programs, school lunch offerings, the military and many other stakeholders in the healthcare sector.

Food Is Medicine

The image below starts with the 10 foods that cause nearly half of U.S. deaths (heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes) each year.

Eating too much: sodium, processed meat, sugary beverages, and unprocessed red meat
Eating too little: nuts & seeds, seafood Omega-3, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and polyunsaturated fats

The Public Initiative aims to save lives and also reduce the skyrocketing costs of healthcare.

LTCi benefit

Workplace Strategies

Reducing employee health risks (like high blood pressure and sugar levels) by only 1% can save employers $83 to $103 each year.
Wellness programs lower medical costs by $3.27 for every $1.00 spent

Lower Income Families

Increasing intake of fruits & vegetables of all SNAP recipients will save $6.77 billion over a lifetime.

Healthcare System

Increasing intake of fruit & vegetables by Medicaid and Medicare participants could prevent almost 2 million cardiovascular disease incidents and save over $40 billion in healthcare costs.
Treating diabetes by providing free fresh food lowers the risk of death or other complications by 40%.
Increasing the amount of whole grains, nuts, fish, and plant-based oils in our diets can prevent 3.31 million cardiovascular disease events. This could save over $102 billion in healthcare costs.

The LTCi Benefit

Here’s the bonus! While we’re enjoying all of this delicious, nutritious food, we’re feeling the incredible benefits in our bodies. We’re also living longer lives with significantly better health. This lowers our own cost of healthcare.

In addition, this preserves the value of your long term care insurance policy, allowing it to grow in value for a longer period of time. When you finally need to start receiving payments, you will have a deeper well to draw from. This gives you access to a wider variety of care options and a higher quality of life in your later years.

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

Medicaid’s Woes Highlighted

October 14, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

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.

One in Five Nursing Home Residents Report Abuse

June 20, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

A new study reports one in five – or about 20% of nursing home residents – have experienced at least one resident-to-resident abusive event.

This is a conundrum brought about by abysmally low pay to nursing home caregivers, and by Medicaid reimbursement rates so low it is difficult for nursing homes to stay in the black. The majority of nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid.

Here’s a blog I wrote showing nursing home workers are quitting to work at McDonald’s, where they get paid more and don’t have to mess with bedpans or possible back injuries.

The article mentions the double homicide at a nursing home not far from here. Here is a series of blogs I did about this event.

If you want to greatly increase the odds you will not wind up in a nursing home, you need to own long-term care insurance (LTCi). Most LTCi policyholders are able to remain at home or move to an assisted living facility, instead of a nursing home. The evidence is in a recent AHIP study sited here; ask and I will email the complete study to you.

The Club Sandwich Generation

June 1, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

I want to thank my courageous colleague Rachel Faiga for allowing me to share her story. I do so in admiration and with deep gratitude to her. It is our hope that Rachel’s story will touch and inspire readers to take action and do responsible long-term care planning, now!

The Club Sandwich Generation, by Rachel Faiga

I have always thought that we are not just the sandwich generation, but the “club sandwich” generation. I helped care for my grandmother for 10 years, and my father has had dementia for years. Last May, our lives changed irrevocably. Our 19-year-old daughter Lee had a catastrophic car accident.

Where to begin…

Back in 1990 I became an LTCi specialist. I sort of just fell into this position, taught myself, and now I live it.

My grandmother needed seven-day-a-week, round-the-clock home care, then a nursing home. Thank goodness she owned LTCi. In fact, she was one of my very first clients. When I consulted at the time as to whether a 76 year-old should have inflation protection, the answer was always no. The cost seemed too high. What a way to learn a lesson, I wish she’d had it! I was actively involved in her care. Her LTCi supplemented other funds she had to enable her to stay at home. Otherwise, she would have gone directly to a nursing home. Eventually, her policy’s benefits were exhausted, forcing her to spend her last five years in a nursing home. She needed a total of about 10 years of care. Having the resources to keep her home for those five years helped us all participate in her care and she had some real quality years in her home.

Fortunately, I also sold my father LTCi. Interestingly, he battled me on this and only applied for it after his attorney recommended it. He currently has dementia and it has been progressing for many, many years. He is getting excellent care because of his LTCi policy.

Back to the car accident…

I was actually at the airport going to a seminar when Lee’s friend called me with the news.

That was followed by a call from the Fairfield Police Department telling me it was really bad and I had to get back immediately.

They sent an ambulance to take me all the way from NYC to the hospital in CT, then onto Yale where she was air lifted.

My daughter had a massive brain injury a broken neck, broken ribs and sternum, a broken wrist in two places and a broken pelvis in seven places, which basically meant that her spine was not attached to her pelvis. She was in a coma for a long while.

Doctors know very little about what to expect from her healing. We have been asking for prayers, healing and good thoughts to be sent to her. Lee has made some remarkable progress this past year, but she has a very long way to go and needs full-time care.

Before Lee’s accident, I was a successful LTCi specialist and workaholic. I am just getting back to work, but very part time. My husband now teaches only two classes a week. We are dividing and conquering, as they say. My husband and I took turns in the brain stimulation rehab hospital in New Jersey (the only place that would accept her with how low she was functioning). We arrange Lee’s schedule, while being at home with our 11 year-old, trying to provide her with a semblance of normal life. There isn’t much time to do anything else. Our stress levels are off the charts.

The hardest part to comprehend is that there is no break. Ever. Lee’s sleep patterns are off; she has pain and confusion. Her emotions are very real and very strong. So this is as they all told us, a marathon, but one that does not have a clear end in sight.

I have always been fiercely independent. But now, we are taking help from the government, friends, and acquaintances. I have learned to say “yes” to help.

My advice is to check your car insurance and make sure the uninsured motorist coverage is very, very high. It might say $3 million but it often is $1 million per person! In an accident, if the other person has little or no coverage that is all you have to go on.

Make sure your kids over 18 appoint you as their health care proxy until they are married, so that you don’t have to go for conservatorship to help your child. If your child needs the kind of help Lee does, and you need a conservatorship, you will both need an attorney.

Look at your health insurance. Does it have a provision that says the health insurance company is first in line for any money that you get from the car insurance to repay their expenses? Not all carriers do!

I have always advised friends and clients to buy LTCi for their unmarried kids over 18. Not all carriers sell policies to people this young. My kids started heading off to college, strapping us financially. We didn’t follow this advice, so regretfully, my kids don’t have LTCi. We all want the best for our kids. That does not stop when they turn 18 and need this kind of help. Being able to control choices is so important. In addition, being able to have help, so that you can be there for yourself, your spouse, your other kids and of course, other friends, family and commitments would be amazing.

I cannot stress enough the importance of LTCi coverage. We all think it won’t be us or our loved ones, but take it from me, it happens and it is not always short-term. The fear and shock and pain are so great when a care need occurs. In addition to this, without LTCi, you just don’t have options.

I hope I don’t sound preachy, but unfortunately these are things I learned the hard way.

If you are a licensed agent, insurable and don’t already own LTCi, I encourage you to get it right now. If you don’t know how to write it, seek the advice of a wise and knowledgeable LTCi specialist.

Spring Comes to LTC Insurance

May 10, 2016 by Honey Leave a Comment

My good friend and colleague Steve Forman has written a report titled “Spring Comes to LTC Insurance”. Here’s a link to the report.

Like me, Steve believes good times are coming for long-term care insurance (LTCi) sales. Here’s a blog I just did about how rate-stable today’s LTCi policies are.

Here’s an excerpt from Steve’s report explaining why the LTCi market is poised for an upswing in sales:

“While the last decade was marked by carriers exiting the long term care insurance market (from a peak of around 110 to today’s dozen or so), the transition to a soft market predicts new entrants will return. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing (aided by a new study from the Society of Actuaries which demonstrates to sideline insurers the remarkably good odds of a profitable future selling LTCI). Within the last twelve months, heavyweight endorser AARP has signaled a new partnership with the private market, a brand new carrier has announced its intention to sell traditional LTCI, and a third major brand has shed every product in its portfolio but LTCI.

Meanwhile, the number of life insurers who recognize the demographic opportunity represented by the Silver Tsunami is unprecedented: seven have entered the combo space within the past five years, while over twenty offer an accelerated benefit for chronic illness and/or critical illness. LIMRA reports that acceleration riders are now a “must have” benefit, and one carrier was quoted in confidence saying, ‘You will never see another life insurance product sold by us which does not include a long term care benefit.'”

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Medicaid’s Woes Highlighted

One in Five Nursing Home Residents Report Abuse

The Club Sandwich Generation

The Club Sandwich Generation, by Rachel Faiga

Spring Comes to LTC Insurance

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