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Long Term Care Insurance may be right for you IF . . .

*  You have not been diagnosed with a long term care illness.

*  You have significant assets or income you want to protect.

*  You can pay the premiums without financial difficulty.

*  You want to stay independent of the support of others or stay independent of Medicaid or other government assistance.

*  You want to have the flexibility of care in the setting of your choice.


Long Term Care Insurance policies may cover:

*  Nursing facility care
*  Home health care
*  Respite care
*  Hospice care
*  Personal care in your home
*  Services in adult care homes or assisted living facilities
*  Adult day care

     These types of policies are not the original "nursing home" policies of the past.  These insurance companies have come up with a more diversified benefit offering.  Policies can be tailored to your specific wants or needs.

     Many times individuals and couples will say to me, "long term care insurance is too expensive."  Statistics prove otherwise.  One in two people will have a long term care need in their lifetime.  If you buy long term care insurance and it costs you $2000.00 per year and you pay on that policy for 20 years, you will be $40000.00 out-of-pocket.  Let's say that you end up needing long term care in the 21st year and you have to be placed into a skilled facility.  The average cost for a nursing facility stay in the state of Arizona today is over $5000.00 per month.  If you stayed in the facility for 12 months, you are out $60000.00, but with your long term care policy, you may be out only 30-90 days of cost to cover the elimination period.  Let's use the 60-day elimination period, at $5000.00 per month, that is a maximum of $10,000.00 you must pay.  Then the long term care insurance policy pays for the next 10 months at the rate of $5000.00 per month for a total benefit of $50000.00.  $50,000.00 minus your initial investment of $40,000.00 for premiums and $10,000.00 for your elimination period means that you break even.  That is more than you can say for any other insurance that you buy (think homeowners insurance or auto insurance).

     The next thing that people say to me is, "Well, what if I never use the policy?  All of that money will be thrown down the drain."  My response to that is that if you never need long term care, you are lucky.  We don't hope that our home burns down so we can use our homeowner's policy, nor do we hope that we get crash our cars so that we can put in a claim on our auto insurance policy.  Remember, you are insuring the risk.  The risk of needing long term care is 1 in 2 people will need it.  Wouldn't you rather be a part of the population that thought ahead and put a plan into place to protect you, your future, and your finances?

     Give us a call today to schedule your meeting with someone in our financial planning division.