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I'm not sure why you would say that good companies don't offer long-term care insurance anymore. Some of the biggest and strongest insurance companies in the country sell long-term care insurance: Massachusetts Mutual, Mutual of Omaha, New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, State Farm, Thrivent, Transamerica, all sell long-term care insurance and they are all very large and very strong companies.
Once a company sells a policy they can't cancel your policy (unless you don't pay your premium on time.) If a company stops selling new policies, they still have to honor all of the policies they've already sold. My relative's policy is with John Hancock. They've stopped selling new policies, but they have to honor all claims of all the policies they've sold previously.
My policy is with Allianz.
My relative's policy is underwritten by John Hancock.
Our advisor pitches one to us about every year. Actually, they seem to be more attractive than what was available 2 or 3 years ago; and we almost applied this year, then backed out.
I think you just need to do some comparison shopping for available plans, considering your own personal plans. If you think you will have a family member care for you at home, obviously, make sure the policy you buy will pay for that.
Another consideration: There will probably be a physical required, and you will have to be in good health to be accepted.
It sometimes seems like there's just no good solution. Healthcare is expensive. Unjustifiably expensive. Prohibitively expensive.
My facility is $14,000 a month. The other day, I saw an aide sleeping in the dining room when she was supposed to be making sure people didn't choke to death. I can't imagine anywhere how a share room (in most cases), 15-20 minutes of a CNA's time per day (who makes $16 an hour), 3 cafeteria style meals plus snacks, and the *presence of an LPN ( a friend who's an LPN told me that means "low-paid nurse") merits $14,000 a month!
But when you add to the mix the fact that many of these people have no other option, it becomes supply and demand and the price skyrockets. The same reason some cancer drugs cost so much. Certainly, the ingredients and production are not much more expensive than many other reasonably priced drugs (I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry), but when you factor people's desperation to live to the equation, you get away with murder!
And sure, the facility needs to keep the lights on and pay the social workers and the financial people and buy supplies, etc, etc, but, for a 30-resident unit, they are pulling in (and this is assuming everyone is on Medicaid paying $8000 a month instead of $14,000) $240,000 A MONTH. And most of these places smell like urine. Are ya kidding me?
OP, you might want to do some research now on what care would look like without LTC insurance. Tour facilities you could see yourself being willing to use, set up an appointment with the admissions and financial person and ask them to be straight with you.
When my mother went into a facility, she was already on community medicaid. Because she had medicaid already in place, and not "pending" as a private pay person would, she jumped to the head of the line. They just wanted to guarantee payment. A person on Medicaid is more of a guarantee than a private pay person whose funds have run out. Just a different way of looking at things.
As for the type of facility she got into, it is nicer than 90% of the facilities in our area (Long Island, NY). She has a private room since the dementia unit is all private rooms. It is not by any means the best of the best. The staff to patient ratio is just average. The cream of the crop facilities would not even look at us once I mentioned Medicaid (I think there were 3 of those) but by and large, there were a handful of very decent facilities that accepted a Medicaid person without a private pay period.
It's worth mentioning that there are relatively few outstanding facilities, period. I contacted about 26, almost every facility in my county and a number of facilities in neighboring counties. I did a LOT of tours, some twice. There were only 3 that I would consider a dream facility, and they weren't that big, so even if you have the money, what are the chances of getting into one of those?
I applied to 5 facilities. The others I don't think I would send a dog there. (There are a LOT of bad facilities.) One accepted her, and it's quite nice, comparatively. It doesn't hurt that it's in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in NY. I've heard "the nicer the neighborhood, the nicer the nursing home," but you'd have to test that in your own state.
When you talk about nursing homes, you're talking about quality of care. We have some outstanding aides, who I wish I could clone, and also some lousy ones we have to complain about and get removed from my mom's care. Mom is fortunate to have me, her "helicopter daughter" right on top of things. That's how we make this work. We MAKE it work.
But what about those of us who have no kids? We NEED to be in those top notch facilities, and we need a strategy to get there, which may or may not include LTC insurance. Do lots of research. Ask questions. Talk to people who've been there, and plan for yourself.
Great question!
Folks if you have it use it.
My dad is currently benefiting from a LTC policy but it will end next May.
Since, I inherited quite a bit of money from my mother, I looked into LTC for myself. I learned that you can't buy it if you are on disability which I am.
We contacted one of the national home care agencies and they handled it for us. This particular home care company processes thousands of long-term care insurance claims every year. All we had to do was sign a couple of HIPAA forms and they took care of the rest. The claim was approved in about 3 weeks.
They handled the claim for free. It makes sense. The home care agencies get paid by the long-term care insurance companies. They have a financial incentive to set up a system to successfully process long-term care insurance claims. They know all the ins and outs of getting a claim approved quickly.