5 Facts About the Senate Finance Long-Term Care Hearing

By Allison Bell | November 21, 2019 at 02:53 PM

1. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., announced Wednesday, at a hearing on Alzheimer’s awareness organized by the committee’s health subcommittee, that he’s circulating a discussion draft of a plan for letting people use money from their retirement plans to pay for LTCI coverage.
2. Toomey said he thinks using a tax credit to spur sales of private LTCI to younger, healthier people could help ease LTCI issuers’ price stability problems.
3. Marc Cohen was one of the witnesses. Cohen, a gerontologist who has been involved in the LTCI market for many years, was one of the hearing witnesses. He said a new federal tax break for LTCI coverage could help increase sales, and reduce LTCI prices, by cutting the net cost of coverage, and also by signaling to younger, healthier people that long-term care risk is something they should think about.
4. Cohen talked about ways to reduce LTCI selling costs. Cohen suggested that it might be possible to increase LTCI coverage costs, and increase sales, by building it into products that people do buy, such as Medicare Advantage plans, or by selling LTCI policies through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) public exchange system.
5.  A Democratic senator asked about the relationship between long-term care and the Affordable Care Act. Family members’ willingness to provide informal care helps reduce the financial impact of long-term care needs on the Medicaid nursing home benefits program.

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The Three Percent Solution

By Ronald R. Hagelman

Impossible not to envision a classic movie version of the damsel in distress tied to train tracks with the sure and certain speeding train barreling down the tracks, steam belching from the smokestack and whistle blaring in a futile effort to prevent an inevitable catastrophe. The problem is, here we are 20 years since HIPPA and we still cannot get a clear vision of what that potential hero hopefully coming to our rescue looks like or if he or she even exists. The potential ugliness of the risk grows larger and continues to resist any amelioration designed by mere mortals.

Forgive the painfully obvious—insurance is about intervention. It is about intentionally restructuring the potential outcome of highly likely adverse future possibilities.

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Webinar – Creating Your Next Sale

LARGE opportunity in the unserved/underserved middle America marketplace.

Topics:

• Designing questions to provoke clients’ thoughts to open the door for additional opportunities
• Identifying characteristics of those in the greatest need of a policy review
• Covering needs beyond simple income protection
• Outlining coverage goals clients may not know they have
• Ensuring clients’ coverage has kept pace with their life
• Spotting additional opportunities since clients last purchased coverage with enhanced living needs benefits

According to LIMRA data, half of existing policyholders have underestimated the volume of Life insurance needed to protect their families/estates.  Further, about 1 in 3 of these underinsured people earn more than $100k a year – meaning they have the resources to purchase additional coverage if they can be educated as to the need and costs of the coverage.

Thursday, September 5, 2019

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75 Must-Know Statistics About Long-Term Care

By: Christine Benz

If there’s a single unsolved problem in the retirement plans for many middle- and upper-middle-income adults, it’s what to do about long-term care costs later in life.

Very high-income, high-net-worth people can plan to self-fund long-term care costs, though I’d advise them to do the math on long-term care cost inflation before getting too comfy with the idea that they’ll have enough to do so. Meanwhile, people without significant financial assets will need to rely on Medicaid-provided long-term care. That’s most people: Medicaid and other government programs cover the majority of the long-term care costs in the U.S.

Sandwiched in the middle are people with some, even significant, financial assets–just not necessarily enough to comfortably fund a $300,000 (or more) long-term care outlay at the end of their lives. For them, the choices are stark and rather unappealing.

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NGL Webinar – Access Life

Introducing a new approach to Linked Benefit/Chronic Illness and Extended Care products!

Topics:

Guaranteed premiums that are guaranteed to never change!

Cash Benefits paid to the insured for Chronic Illness/Extended LTC needs

Allowing the insured flexibility in who they hire for home care; family- and unlicensed people are able to provide care in their own homes!

Online drop-ticket application process with same day underwriting decisions in most cases

NO Needles, Paramed or Body Fluids required–EVER

NO LTC certification needed to sell the plan

Plan designs/pricing/marketing materials designed to be simple—for middle America

Guaranteed Death Benefit for the life of the policy

Guaranteed Final Expense & Terminal Illness Benefit

Guaranteed Cash Value

Quick and generous commissions paid DAILY!

Barry Fisher, Blair Farwell and Ron Cohen will present a webinar you don’t want to miss.

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Preparing for an effective LTC conversation with clients

Shawn Britt, CLU®, CLTC

Director, Long-term care initiatives, Advanced Consulting Group

What is the best way to sell long-term care (LTC) products? You don’t sell product, or start a LTC conversation, touting the value of having LTC coverage. You may find more success by discussing the importance of planning for such an event, and the consequences that could follow if there is no plan in place. Your goal is to be a “problem solver,” not a sales person.

Once the client sees the need for LTC planning, that will lead to a need to fund their own LTC plan. You can then show your client funding options (products) for LTC that provides a “win-win” outcome. But first, let’s look at a few things to remember when becoming an LTC planner.

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Nursing home costs in the U.S. are rising even faster than health care

By Kate Gibson / MoneyWatch

• The cost of nursing homes in the U.S. can easily top $70,000 a year and has risen even faster than that of overall medical care in some states, a Georgetown University Medical Center study found.
• New York nursing homes were the most expensive, averaging more than $300 a day, while Texas had the most affordable facilities.

Nursing home costs can cost upwards of $100,000 a year, a heavy financial burden even for Americans who have set money aside for their later years — and a crushing one for those who haven’t. And those costs are rising, even outstripping the rising cost of health care in the U.S.

 

“What is already expensive is only getting more so,” said Dr. Sean Huang, lead author of a study by researchers at the Georgetown University Medical Center.

The cost of nursing home care is a particular risk for people without long-term care insurance or Medicaid coverage, Huang said, noting the number of Americans who are already short on retirement savings. Annual out-of-pocket expenditures can easily exceed $70,000, found the analysis of prices from 2005 through 2010 across eight U.S. states.

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