You might find this poll and thread that I started two years ago interesting:
http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f28/ltc-poll-67962.html
There were over 100 replies to it which really helped to clarify my own thoughts.
We are self insuring. We are really in the sort of in the middle group that I referred to in that thread. That is, enough assets to want to protect them, but not so many that it is easy to self insure. We are in that group of people that is the theoretical market for long term care insurance.
However, the flaws with the insurance product just make it unappealing. A really big factor is that most policies (at this time) cover only a few years of expenses. That is the risk we are able to cover. The bigger risk is someone being in a nursing home for years. That is not very unlikely, but does happen (DH's mother was in a nursing home for about 8 years). However, most current policies won't cover many years of care.
Again, I would like to like long term care insurance, but just find the product flawed.