Terry Savage Archives - Long Term Care Insurance Expert | Honey Leveen

Generation Warfare is Brewing

May 12, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

In her April 9, 2014 column, one of my heroines, Terry Savage, describes looming Generation Warfare.

In a nutshell, our government is spending far more than it takes in. Check out Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit that keeps track of both our current national debt and the burden of future government payment promises. We now have an “official” national debt of more than $17.4 Trillion. The ticking clock on their website shows that we have promised to pay a total of $76 trillion to future Social Security and Medicare recipients, not to mention interest on our debt, along with military retirement benefits, etc.

In other words, we owe a lot of money! More than the government can raise in taxes.

In the meantime, Washington is playing a shell game. Instead of figuring out how to grow the economic pie, they are obsessed with dividing up the existing pie.

Generational warfare is brewing. Young people are enticed to take out student loans at interest rates many times what the government pays to borrow — and then graduate into an economy that is not providing jobs so they can repay those loans.

Younger workers pay into a Social Security “trust fund” that is scheduled to move onto shaky ground long before they can expect to receive benefits. They’ll be supporting government retirement benefits for someone else’s parents and grandparents.

And from the seniors’ side, isn’t it generation warfare for the Fed to keep interest rates low (depriving seniors of the opportunity to earn interest in their retirement years), so that the government’s unprecedented borrowing (a burden on the young) can continue?

And isn’t it generation warfare to reduce the government’s support for Medicare Advantage plans and limit Medicare reimbursements to physicians and hospitals, just when seniors most need the care?

Here’s another article about oncoming Generation Warfare that came out about the same time Terry Savage’s column did. It echoes what Terry predicts.

My April 9, 2014 blog is about how astonishingly huge and unsustainable our national debt is. Tax collection doesn’t put a dent in it. Medicare and Medicaid, the primary ways long-term care is paid in the US, are on the firing line and already suffering cutbacks. The giant bulge of Baby Boomers, most of whom are wholly unprepared to pay for their long-term care, is just beginning to hit our system.

At age 65, there’s a 70% chance any of us will need long-term care during our lives. I urge you not to depend on the government to provide your long-term care.

Many of Us Are Setting Ourselves Up for Undignified, Bleak Final Years

March 17, 2014 by Honey Leveen Leave a Comment

In my March 6, 2014 blog, I reported that TX ranks third in the country in the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and second in the country for number of Alzheimer’s deaths. It turns out, this could be wrong.

A provocative new study reported in the March 12, 2014 New York Times, suggests that Alzheimer’s disease causes six times as many deaths as the official statistics would indicate!

Here’s a quote from the new study:

“Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are under-reported on death certificates and medical records,” said study author Bryan D. James, PhD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Death certificates often list the immediate cause of death, such as pneumonia, rather than listing dementia as an underlying cause.” James added that attempting to identify a single cause of death does not always capture the reality of the process of dying for most elderly people, as multiple health issues often contribute.”

People with AD need more expensive long-term care than anyone else. According to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (www.aaltci.org), the number one reason people collect from long-term care insurance (LTCi) is due to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Insurance companies pay out more money on AD claims than for any other cause.

Unfortunately, most people don’t own long-term care insurance. Most people figure out how expensive, stressful, and time consuming caring for an AD patient is, the hard way.

Here’s additional news that does not bode well for most of us, who are woefully unprepared for retirement and long-term care.

It is unrealistic to expect the government to pay for long-term care. That’s the subject of a different blog.

Here’s a link to Terry Savage’s February 25, 2014 Huffington Post column describing why retirement is becoming a luxury fewer and fewer people can enjoy.

Here’s a March 12, 2014 New York Times article describing why income inequality often disables wealth transfers at death. From the article, “The top 1 percent of households owns about 35 percent of American wealth, more than the entire bottom 90 percent does.” At death, the wealth of the 1% is not trickling down to the rest of us.

Long-term care insurance (LTCi) can be reasonable in cost. To me, what’s not reasonable, is needing long-term care for anything but a short time, and not owning LTCi.

My advice is to read, heed, and be honest about your future by preparing responsibly for your long-term care.

Make a Gift of Long-term Care Insurance

May 6, 2011 by Honey Leave a Comment

Mothers spend their lives worrying about you – and they never stop. But as mothers grow older, they have another worry: becoming a burden to their children.

With Mother’s Day approaching, why not purchase long-term care insurance (LTCi) for your parents? There’s not a more appropriate, caring, considerate gift. Siblings can chip in and wind up with very, very low premiums.

LTCi is the gift that ensures dignity, options, choices and access if care is needed. LTCi greatly contributes to keeping families united and stress-free. Since LTCi provides the money to access the most desirable care options, LTCi policyholders often access the right kind of care, sooner than their people with no LTCi.

Without LTCi, families often experience great stress, panic and overwhelming expenses because they are forced to react after a health event triggers a care need. These families are not prepared, and family members can be at odds with each other about the best course of action. Sadly, this discord can carry forward to become mom or dad’s undesired legacy. How I wish I hadn’t seen so many completely avoidable instances where this happened!

If you are still mired in a state of denial about why more and more people understand that LTCi is an absolute necessity, please contact me.

I want to thank nationally syndicated columnist Terry Savage, whose May 4, 2009 article in the Chicago Sun-Times inspired me to post this blog again this year. Terry wrote a wonderful and powerful piece about giving long-term care insurance for Mother’s Day.

President’s Day Message from Terry Savage

February 21, 2011 by Honey Leave a Comment

I am a huge fan of Terry Savage’s.

I’m providing a link to her piece titled “Pols are making us pay for their false promises” (Chicago Sun Times, Feb 21, 2011) because no one says it more succinctly and eloquently than Terry does.

Terry is describing the unsustainable “house of cards” that’s been created by continued spending of government money that doesn’t exist.

Government funding of long-term care is just one such entitlement.

If you agree with my opinion that it is entirely unrealistic to expect any help from the government when it comes to paying long-term care costs, you understand that long-term care insurance ownership is the only way to ensure dignity, options and choices if you wind up needing long-term care.

Another Harmful Article on long-term care (LTC)

January 28, 2011 by Honey Leave a Comment

Checking my Google alerts for long-term care (LTC) mentions, I found this useful and correct piece by Terry Savage, someone I greatly respect because she researches thoroughly (“Long-term care combined with life insurance solves problems,” Chicago Sun Times, January 24, 2011).

Then I came across this harmful piece by Anne Teregesen of the Wall Street Journal (“The latest long-term-care snafu,” Wall Street Journal, Personal Finance, January 22, 2011.) Here’s what I had to say to her:

Dear Ms Teregesen,

While you got your info correct in this recent article, it is a pity that you chose to place all the emphasis in this piece on old policies without mentioning that policies placed from the 90’s on don’t have these restrictions and work like a charm. Furthermore, the number of these old-old policies is small – a point you also failed to mention. Rather than “spook” consumers away and give them one more reason to procrastinate and not have a conversation about responsible LTC planning, I wonder why you could not have at least mentioned that the statistics are that over 95% of all LTC claims get paid. Normally, the reasons LTC claims don’t get paid are that trigger criteria aren’t met or the claim is incomplete. If the claim is incomplete or incorrect, we correct it, re-submit, and the claim gets paid. The claims process is pretty uncomplicated. It’s becoming quite routine for home health agencies and assisted living facilities to complete claim paperwork. There are plenty of sources for these facts that you failed to use. So now you have one more column with a negative spin on responsible LTC planning. You have further discouraged the vast wave of Baby Boomers, who are already ill prepared and who will probably need lots of long-term care in a giant bulge, from considering reasonably priced LTC. Because of your inadequate research, you have done the public a bad service.

Request a Free, No-Obligation LTCi Quote

Many of Us Are Setting Ourselves Up for Undignified, Bleak Final Years

Make a Gift of Long-term Care Insurance

President’s Day Message from Terry Savage

Another Harmful Article on long-term care (LTC)

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