15 Most Expensive States for Long-Term Care: 2017

By Marlene Y. Satter   ThinkAdvisor

Genworth’s annual study on the cost of care nationwide, which includes home care, assisted living facilities, etc., is not reassuring

The price of long-term care insurance is high—for everyone involved. Not just the patient but also the caregivers pay in more than money to make sure that the person in need of care is given the best care they can manage.

In this year’s version of Genworth Financial’s annual study on the cost of care nationwide—not just in nursing homes, which are less and less on the forefront, but also care provided at home, adult day care and assisted living facilities—the news is not reassuring. Costs have risen steadily, with those for licensed homemakers—those who provide what the study calls “hands-on personal care” for patients still in their homes—rising the fastest, increasing 6.17% just since last year.

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Median cost of LTC services jumps 4.5% this year, rising at about three times the rate of inflation

Published 09/28/2017

For the 70% of people older than 65 who the experts say will need long term care at some point in their lives(1), the costs just notched up again.

According to the Genworth 2017 Cost of Care Survey released Sept. 26, the annual median cost of long term care services increased an average of 4.5% from 2016 to 2017, the second-highest year-over-year increase for nursing homes and home care since the study began in 2004 and nearly three times the 1.7% U.S. rate of inflation.

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3 Insurance-Based Medicaid Planning Strategies

A long-term care insurance advocate catalogs impoverishment methods

Moses and his group have argued for years that well-intentioned federal and state policymakers have made it too easy for middle-income people, and even high-income people, to qualify for Medicaid nursing home benefits, by excluding too many assets and planning strategies from the Medicaid eligibility screening process.

Encouraging middle-income and high-income people to depend on Medicaid nursing home benefits crowds out private long-term care insurance and reduces the resources Medicaid has to serve people who are really poor, Moses and his supporters say.

Defenders of the current rules say that few ordinary Americans have the ability to pay for much nursing home care, or for private long-term care insurance, and that the U.S. private long-term care insurance market works too poorly for policymakers to expect consumers to depend on it.

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Maximizing Tax Deductions For Long-Term Care (LTC) Insurance

By: Michael Kitces

Under IRC Section 213(d)(1)(D), premiums for long-term care insurance are deductible along with other individual medical expenses.

Notably, to be eligible for deductibility, the long-term care insurance must be (tax-)“qualified” coverage (as defined under IRC Section 7702B(b)), though in practice virtually all long-term care insurance issued today (and in the past 20 years) is tax-qualified. (Non-Tax-Qualified, or NTQ long-term care insurance, is primarily characterized by either not requiring a minimum Activities of Daily Living restriction, or being more lax in the certification requirements to be eligible for claims.)

Premiums paid for tax-qualified LTC insurance are deductible if paid for the individual taxpayer themselves, his/her spouse, or any dependent as defined under IRC Section 152, which can include both dependent children and even dependent parents, if they otherwise qualify as dependents for tax purposes, and without regard to the must-be-unmarried or income tests that otherwise apply to a “qualifying relative” dependent.

While premiums are deductible, though, the amount of the deduction is limited.

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Clarifying the Options for Long-Term Care

By David LaMartina

What clients need to know about in-home, residential and continuing care

Given the growing need for long-term care, more advisors are talking to clients about LTC insurance, hybrid life, and other funding options. Fewer advisors, however, are discussing the specific options for care. To many clients – particularly those who’ve never dealt with an aging parent’s LTC – the whole thing seems hazy and unpredictable.

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