LTC insurance? Other options?

[Floridatennisplayer]

I searched and didn't find much. LTC Insurance is expensive. Agent also told me about a SPWL policy that if you are put in a facility you can use it for that as a new advantage.

What say ye?

 

[pb4uski]

Rolling the dice and self insuring because the LTC policies out there seem too expensive compared to the likely benefits and the risk.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

To OP. SPWL for LTC sounds like a bad deal. You either insure for the risk (purchase an LTC policy) or you put aside enough funds to deal with it.

LTC is expensive because in the early days of LTC most insurers priced it too low and now have dropped out of the market. Today's underwriters will not make that mistake again.

 

[athena53]

Rolling the dice and self insuring because the LTC policies out there seem too expensive compared to the likely benefits and the risk.

Same here. Now that it's clear DH won't outlive me we don't have to worry about funding 2 people in LTC. (Looking to the future, I'd definitely like it to include another good man, but not the state-mandated entanglements of marriage.) My investment income plus SS, plus savings from not owning a house, should pay for LTC if I need it. If not, DS and DDIL will get a healthy boost to their own retirement funds after I'm gone.

 

[ripper1]

Ha......LTHC is the least of my problems. As a City of Chicago Retiree my health care premiums are going to 2300 a month.

 

[jkern]

Self insure here too. I don't like the idea of paying premiums for years and then having them go sky high and potentially being priced out right before you may need it.

 

[Teacher Terry]

2300/month How is that even possible. I thought ours of 900/month for 2 people was bad. We do not feel the insurance is worth it for LTC.

 

[RetireAge50]

No insurance. I plan to pay for my own long term care whether I need someone to take care of me or not.

 

[Big_Hitter]

I thought there was some LI product that one could use to pay LTC expenses....

I don't want to have to go through underwriting again though

 

[Montecfo]

No fan of LTC insurance here either. I am toying with the idea of 2nd to die life insurance, to "reflenish" the estate if LTC depletes it.

That way at least you know you are getting what you paid for.

 

[W2R]

I'm self insuring. Not being married, I do not need to be concerned about how much I leave to a spouse. Of course I'd prefer to leave a decent sized estate.

We plan to age in place, and take care of each other as long as we can. Ideally I could stay in my home until my last dying breath.

But if one or both of us gets Alzheimer's or some other devastating health issue, all bets are off and it's off to the LTC facility I suppose.

 

[Teacher Terry]

We were friends with a couple where she kept getting ovarian cancer and he cared for her off and on for 14 years. Then he got cancer and she got Alzheimer's. He still cared for her until about 5 months before he died he became too sick so I put her in a home and he moved in with his son. They were only in early 60's. Now her cancer is back. YOu just never know what life has in store for you.

 

[COcheesehead]

Not sure if the OP saw this thread.
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f38/edelman-change-in-thinking-about-ltc-insurance-82806.html

 

[rodi]

I thought there was some LI product that one could use to pay LTC expenses....

I don't want to have to go through underwriting again though

I think that's what the OP is talking about - he mentioned SPWL... I assumed he meant single premium whole life. (But be careful looking up the acronym... Urbandictionary has a definition that is quite different and had me laughing really loudly.)

We have a paid for house in an expensive housing market... even if the value were to drop in half - there's still enough for the community spouse to downsize and leave enough to pay for several years of nursing home. So our home is our LTC insurance.

I wasn't comfortable with the idea that LTC premiums could jump in an unrestricted manner... It would suck to pay in for 10 years or more than have the premiums triple and be unaffordable.

 

[COcheesehead]

I thought there was some LI product that one could use to pay LTC expenses....

I don't want to have to go through underwriting again though

You can get a LTC rider on a whole life policy. Depending on how you fund it, the dividends could end up paying for the policy as well, which is nice. The cash value could come in handy if you don't end up using the LTC.

I sure wouldn't want to have to sell my home in the middle of a medical situation with my spouse. That sounds horrible.

 

[prototype]

I too decided to self insure a while back for the same reasons people have mentioned here (too expensive, questionable benefits,...).

Not sure if this provided any utility other than adding Management Reserve (cushion) to my ever changing financial plan, but what I did with the two "freebie" runs I had done with Vanguard (early 2012 and late 2015) was I just left some hard non Vanguard assets ($75K and then $90K) out. I often do the same when using Firecalc, *******, ESP Planner, iORP... to get some sort of "comfy cozy sanity check" numbers based on having to spend large amount of money for a year or so at time some point in late life.

Given the trending % increase in LTC and Healthcare in general, I'm not how many months of decent LTC $90K in todays dollars (50/50 AA) would get me in 20 or 30 years (i.e. may ages at 80 and 90).

 

[mathjak107]

got our renewal yesterday . after a big increase last year which was for our 2nd policy year we got no increase at all for this up coming year

 

[merlin3942]

... I wasn't comfortable with the idea that LTC premiums could jump in an unrestricted manner... It would suck to pay in for 10 years or more than have the premiums triple and be unaffordable.

I had already taken out an LTC policy 5 or 6 years ago before I knew about this forum .... I might not have done it had I read some of the opinions on here.

I'm glad that at least I decided to go with a "pay-premiums-for-10-years-and done" plan, and I am already 6 years into it. It's one of those "state partnership approved plans" here in Indiana, so at least I get to deduct the premium from my state income tax every year. So far, there haven't been any rate increases ... but I hold my breath every year, and I fully expect at least one increase within the next 4 years before I'm done paying into it. But at least after that, they can't raise my premiums any more.

At the time, it sounded like a pretty good deal (comparatively) - it would pay $5K/month, unlimited payout, with a 5% yearly compounding. I'm currently paying just under $8K/year for the 10-year pay, and as I mentioned, have 4 more years to go.

The policy is with Genworth - they stopped offering this particular policy less than a year after I signed up for it (I think most of their policies are now limited to 4 years maximum, rather than unlimited payout).

BUT ... after I found this forum, I found Nords' nightmarish account of what he had to go through in actually trying to COLLECT on an LTC policy when his father had to go into a nursing home, so I have very little hope that I'll ever actually be able to use the policy. I'm single, no kids, so I don't have anyone like Nords to be an "advocate" when I get to the point of not being able to do that for myself ... will have to rely on an attorney or someone like that I suppose.

 

[mathjak107]

nords had dealt with a much older policy with wording that would rival an old variable annuity .

today most if not all policy's are in simple english with simple requirements in order to get paid .

older policy's had loop holes and conflicting rules .

our partnership plan is 3 years insurance , then it is the perks we want after the insurance runs out .

bills are picked up by medicaid with no asset shifting , no asset look back , no trusts needed and most important no ridiculously low maximums on income for the stay at home spouse. it is great you do asset shifting or truets to protect assets . now try to live on the medicaid limits .

our partnership plan does away with all that

 

[merlin3942]

btw - for the OP - here's a link to an excellent thread put together by Nords about his experiences with LTC .....

http://www.early-retirement.org/for...ng-term-care-ltc-and-ltc-insurance-30860.html

 

[mathjak107]

an experience with a much older policy that had more holes and vagueness to it than anything you will likely see today .

i know our policy language is very clear ,simple and precise as to what is covered and when

 

[merlin3942]

nords had dealt with a much older policy with wording that would rival an old variable annuity .

today most if not all policy's are in simple english with simple requirements in order to get paid .

older policy's had loop holes and conflicting rules .

our partnership plan is 3 years insurance , then it is the perks we want after the insurance runs out .

bills are picked up by medicaid with no asset shifting , no asset look back , no trusts needed and most important no ridiculously low maximums on income for the stay at home spouse. it is great you do asset shifting or truets to protect assets . now try to live on the medicaid limits .

our partnership plan does away with all that

Good to know! So you are saying there's hope!

 

[mathjak107]

i can only speak for my gensworth ny partnership plan . but i imagine today all of these policy's are cleaned up

 

[Nords]

Good to know! So you are saying there's hope!

Merlin, please contact me if you want to know more of the actual details and my experience with John Hancock's long-term care insurance policy. The phrases "...wording that would rival an old variable annuity" and "that had more holes and vagueness to it than anything you will likely see today" are not the experience I had.

Why I Won't Buy Long-Term Care Insurance - Military Guide

 

[ripper1]

Merlin, please contact me if you want to know more of the actual details and my experience with John Hancock's long-term care insurance policy. The phrases "...wording that would rival an old variable annuity" and "that had more holes and vagueness to it than anything you will likely see today" are not the experience I had.

Why I Won't Buy Long-Term Care Insurance - Military Guide

Great article, Nords. It's a big sham. Not worth it.