There are roughly 313 million people that live in the U.S. and only about 8 million own a long-term care insurance policy, this is a pretty small percentage! So why is it that most Americans fail to plan for something that they have a 70% chance of needing after the age of 65? There are several reasons:
-Some people are not aware that long-term care insurance even exists
-Some think that it is included in their health insurance
-People think "this won't happen to me"
-They avoid the thought of needing care and loosing their independence
-They are provided with the wrong information about long-term care insurance
-Cost
-And one of the biggest misconceptions is that long-term care insurance is covered by Medicare
As you can see there are several reasons people don't purchase long-term care insurance. Probably the two most popular reasons are the cost and they think that Medicare will cover the costs of care. One thing I would like to point out is that long-term care insurance has so many different options when constructing a policy, so it is easy to make the necessary changes to fit into most budgets. It is better to have some coverage than none at all. And as far as Medicare covering the cost of long-term care services, this is far from the truth. Medicare is more for short term care, not long term, it will cover up to 100 days of skilled nursing care and home health care must be skilled care as well, which most home health care provided is from a home health aide or a homemaker service, which these are not skilled care. In addition, to qualify for Medicare long-term care benefits you must have at least a 3-day hospital stay before entering a nursing home. Medicare should not be a substitution for long-term care insurance.
If you have assets to protect it is wise to plan for long-term care with LTC Insurance! Visit www.ltcinsurancethatmatters.com!
Lack of planning mostly results to adverse effect on seniors. Like financial cost on part of the children or to extended family members. Without proper planning long term care becomes the greatest crisis of an elderly individual which most people don't understand. I suggest they visit http://www.infolongtermcare.org/long-term-care-insurance-costs/ to know why planning your long term care is important.
ReplyDeleteThank you for a helpful article, now I will focus on the option, because you are quite right that some people do not know about it and if still aware of the option, hope it will not happen to them. With current Obamacare I should investigate the option, because for the present I am going to avoid it. I know that money is always here and will use them in case of emergency. Still being young today I realise that once I will retire and it will be nice to have a long-term care insurance then.
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