Long-Term-Care Insurance Isn’t Dead. It’s Now an Estate-Planning Tool

By Leslie Scism

Last year, after finishing with college tuition for their three children, Jessica Galligan Goldsmith and her husband, James, treated themselves to something she had long wanted: long-term-care insurance.

It hasn’t been cheap. The couple, both lawyers in their mid-50s, will shell out more than $320,000 between them over a decade. For that, they will be able to tap into benefits topping $1 million apiece by the time they are in their 80s, the age when many Americans suffer from dementia or other illnesses that require full-time care.

Plus, the policies pay out death benefits if long-term care isn’t ultimately needed, and most provide 10% to 20% of the original death benefit even if the long-term-care proceeds are fully tapped.

Such policies that combine long-term-care coverage with a potential life-insurance benefit are called “hybrids,” and they are reshaping the long-term-care niche of the U.S. insurance industry.

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Millennials May Care About Long-Term Care Benefits

By Allison Bell | June 27, 2018

Carriers may be afraid to sell it, but workers seem to like it almost as much as life insurance.

Workers in the “Millennial” generation — those born from 1979 to 2000 — may like seeing long-term care insurance (LTCI) options on the benefits menu even more than older workers do.
All workers combined say they like LTCI benefits almost as much as they say they like life disability insurance.

Workers seem to be much more interested in LTCI benefits than in benefits sometimes seen as LTCI substitutes, such as critical illness insurance and cancer insurance.

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Industry Articles

• 5 Benefits Trends on Prudential’s Radar Now
  Financial wellness is a thing. But…how do you measure that? Read more.
• Hannover Re Backs OneAmerica Life-Based LTC Product
  A Hannover Re executive says his company likes OneAmerica’s experience in the LTC hybrid market. Read more.
• Some Advisors Call for Early Long-Term Care Planning
  Half of a large bank’s high-net-worth advisors start LTC talks when the client relationship starts. Read more.

Life-LTC combo products on rise; now represent 25% of total new U.S. life insurance premium

By Insurance Forums Staff

Total new premium for life combination products (which combine life insurance with long-term care or chronic illness coverage) increased 18% to $4.1 billion in 2017, according to LIMRA’s 2017 Individual Life Combination Products Annual Review, released June 21. This is the third consecutive year of premium growth.

Life combination product market share of individual life insurance premium has increased 10 percentage points over the last two years and represents 25% of total new U.S. life insurance premium in 2017.

“Life combination product premium has increased by double-digits in four of the last five years. Much of this growth may be attributed to the attractive value proposition these product offer to consumers,” said Elaine Tumicki, corporate vice president and director LIMRA Product Research. “Our consumer research finds more than a third of U.S. consumers said they would consider a combination product because no matter the circumstances they or their beneficiaries would benefit.”

LIMRA’s study finds there were 260,000 policies sold in 2017, 5% higher than 2016 results.

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Industry Articles

How to Talk About Long-Term Care Planning Now
Here are some phrases you can use to persuade listeners to notice the train that’s coming at them. Read more.

Fighting to Honor a Father’s Last Wish: To Die at Home

By NINA BERNSTEIN

Joseph Andrey was 5 years old in 1927 when his impoverished mother sold him to the manager of a popular vaudeville act. He was 91 last year when he told the story again, propped in a wheelchair in the rehabilitation unit of a nursing home where it seemed as though age and infirmity had put a different kind of price on his head.

Craning his neck, he sought the eyes of his daughter, Maureen Stefanides, who had promised to get him out of this place. “I want to go home, to my books and my music,” he said, his voice whispery but intense.

He was still her handsome father, the song-and-dance man of her childhood, with a full head of wavy hair and blue eyes that lit up when he talked. But he was gaunt now, warped like a weathered plank, perhaps by late effects of an old stroke, certainly by muscle atrophy and bad circulation in his legs.

Now she was determined to fulfill her father’s dearest wish, the wish so common among frail, elderly people: to die at home.

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Medicare could run out of money by 2026

By Phil Galewitz, Kaiser Health News

Medicare’s financial condition has taken a turn for the worse because of predicted higher hospital spending and lower tax revenues that fund the program, the federal government reported Tuesday.

In its annual report to Congress, the Medicare board of trustees said the program’s hospital insurance trust fund could run out of money by 2026 — three years earlier than projected last year.

A senior government official briefing reporters attributed the worsened outlook for Medicare to several factors that are reducing funding and increasing spending.

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