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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Sales Ideas

3 Essential Steps to Getting Out of a Sales Slump Having trouble getting the right people to buy the right annuities? You can fix that. Read more.

5 Mistakes That Could Derail Your Clients’ Retirement About half of U.S. adults have not even tried to estimate how much money they’ll need to retire. Read more.

Life Insurance Can Be a Great Retirement Planning Tool It can protect clients against dying too soon, and it can help solve many other problems. Read more.

Individual Disability Insurance Can Help Family Caregivers A common, but under-used, protection product may be able to do more than you think. Read more.

Sales Ideas

Social Security Survivor Benefits: Don’t Just Survive, Maximize The extra funds overlooked in survivor benefits can mean the difference between living in poverty and relative comfort for many clients. Read more.

Prepare Your Clients for These 5 Life Events Retirement planning is far from the only component of a robust financial plan. Read more.

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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Views How to protect workers’ retirement with LTC benefits

By William M. Upson

Long-term care insurance is a blind spot for most consultants, but neglecting it leaves employees open to huge financial risk, says adviser William Upson.

Long-term care insurance is the most effective solution to fill the gaps in most retirement plans, as well as protect young Americans’ future lifestyles against financial strain. It’s also an accessible option, as smart employers can offer it at no cost as a benefit to their employees and healthy individuals can qualify independently at a low cost.

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Reaching the Middle Market, Part 2: How to Make Yourself Heard

By David Whiteside

Social media posts might not have magic powers

Last week, in Reaching the Middle Market, Part 1: Why You Need a Strategy, David Whiteside talked about how big, and complicated, the U.S. middle market really is.

Here, Whiteside talks about how insurance agents, advisors and other financial services players are dividing the middle market into segments, and how they’re getting the attention of the people in their target segments.

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