LTC Queen

“A Woman’s Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance Protection” is now available. This large brochure has been published by the AALTCI (American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance).

The brochure gives a broad range of highly relevant information about issues concerning the possibility of needing care, all from a woman’s point of view.

I have a limited number of these brochures and will be glad to mail you a free copy, at your request.

The following is a summary of John Goodman’s recent Forbes article about the status of Medicare and Social Security. It is important because currently, these two programs plus Medicaid pay the majority of long-term care costs in this country.

I take no credit for the summary. It was written by friend and Center for Long-Term Care Reform President Steve Moses.

For the article itself, click here.

What all of this boils down to is that our current, primarily government-funded methods of paying long-term care costs are not only broken, but unsustainable.

I prefer to use firsthand, front-line stories to illustrate how not owning long-term care insurance can destroy dignity, rob people of options, and wreck havoc with families. If you don’t like my approach perhaps Steve’s more numerical, factual approach will resonate more.

Either way, if you don’t own long-term care insurance, you need to be talking about it and taking it seriously RIGHT NOW!

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AN UNFUNDED LIABILITY EXPLOSION, summarized by Steve Moses.

Recently, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees released this year’s annual report on the economic health of both programs. Unfortunately, the Trustees and the financial press ignored the massive unfunded liability that is being created for future generations, says John C. Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

According to the Medicare Trustees:

o Medicare’s expected future obligations exceeded premiums and dedicated taxes by $89 trillion.

o In other words, Medicare’s liability is about 5 1/2 times the size of Social Security’s ($18 trillion) and about six times the size of the entire U.S. economy.

o Throw in Medicaid, and health care spending alone will crowd out every other thing the federal government is doing by mid-century, says Goodman.

Clearly we are on an unsustainable path.

Source: John C. Goodman, “A Medicare Explosion,” Forbes, May 19, 2009.

For text:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/19/medicare-ticking-bomb-opinions-contributors-goodman.html

On vacation at Ojo Caliente spa I met and established easy rapport with a very pleasant woman slightly younger than myself. I’ll call her Sylvia. Sylvia felt comfortable readily confiding in me, but more than that: I believe she felt a strong need to confide and share her painful story.

She had come all the way from NY, with various aches and pains, seeking refuge at this peaceful, relaxing spa, in the middle of nowhere, nestled into the cliffs. Upon arrival, she was still too keyed up to relax. Thankfully, after a day, the spa had begun to work its charms, and she was able to retrieve her laughter.

Sylvia is a PhD physicist with a well-paying and meaningful job. Caregiving responsibilities for her parents and aunt and uncle have now defaulted primarily on to her shoulders.

Sylvia is in a no-win situation. She has chosen to be “the good daughter” and moved in with her parents to better assist. She explained her relationship with her parents was never without strife, and now that they are infirm, prior conflict producing behaviors have exacerbated. This has caused her to gain 70 pounds.

Sylvia has my full-fledged empathy…how could she know I understood her so very well? I was happy to listen and am sorry our time together was limited. Sylvia has made a profound impression on me.

Parents, aunt and uncle had proper Medicare coverage and enough wealth and retirement income to sustain comfortable retirements…if they ignored the 5,000 pound elephant of long-term care in the room…which evidently, they did.

Sylvia explained they have enough wealth to pay for care, but I cannot agree. If so, why is she living with them, and suffering as she is?

Perhaps  they have enough wealth to pay for care if they start liquidating it, but they’re not, and they are clearly unwilling to.

“I’ll just self-insure” may be the #1 all time favorite excuse to not buy LTC insurance. Perhaps Sylvia’s parents used this very excuse not to buy LTC when they were able. If not, there are many other popular LTC excuses they might have used, as well.

Without LTC, when care is needed, family dynamics are often thrown into a tailspin. Relationships degrade, resentments flourish. Denial of the need for care provides fertile ground for stress to grow and fester. Access to appropriate paid care is put off longer than optimal and then rationed.

When they might have been able to chart a more dignified course of action and purchase reasonably priced LTC insurance, they chose instead to not honestly discuss the 5,000 pound elephant of long-term care in the room.

Mothers spend their lives worrying about you — and they never stop. But as mothers grow older, they have another worry: Not becoming a burden to their children.

With Mother’s Day approaching, why not purchase long-term care insurance for your parents? There’s not a more appropriate, caring, considerate gift you can give. Siblings can chip in together and wind up with very, very low premiums.

LTC insurance is the gift that ensures dignity, options, choices and access if care is needed. LTCI greatly contributes to keeping families united and stress-free. Since LTCI provides the money to access the most desirable care options, LTCI policy holders often access the right kind of care, sooner.

Without LTCI, families often experience great duress, stress, and panic because they are forced to react, after a health event triggers a care need. Families are not prepared. Family members can be at odds with each other about the best course of action.  Sadly, this discord can carry forward to become mom or dad’s undesired legacy. How I wish I hadn’t seen so many completely avoidable instances where this happened!

If you are still mired in a state of denial about about why more and more people understand that LTCI is an absolute necessity, please contact me.

I want to thank nationally syndicated columnist Terry Savage of the Chicago Sun-Times for inspiring me to write this. Terry has written a wonderful and powerful piece about about giving LTC Insurance for Mother’s Day. Click here for her article.

You’ll find an article, quoting me extensively, posted at http://www.agentssalesjournal.com/content/view/1332/. It’s about using Facebook for friendship AND business.

I’d say more, but Agents Sales Journal Associate Editor Heather Strickland nails it, and says it all in her excellent piece.

Pill$ and Bill$ is the catchy title of a very funny new book about long-term care insurance.  It is sub-titled, “How to Lose It All and End Up in a Nursing Home!”. It bills itself as The Complete Guide to Extreme Poverty.

It takes no more than an hour to read, but you could selectively read chapters, if you prefer. Some of the chapter titles are : “I’m Going to Do Something, Just Not Right Now”, “I’m Just Going to Self-Insure”, “My Children Will Take Care of Me”, “I’m Just Going to Shoot Myself”.

Here’s a quote from the introduction: “How to lose it all and end up in a nursing home is really a very simple process and I promise that this book will show you how to accomplish it. Don’t be discouraged, anyone can do it. In fact, I will venture to say that you are probably well on your way and a lot further along in the process than you are giving yourself credit for…All you need to do is to follow your instincts, seek advice from friends and family, read articles, and talk to experts in the wrong fields….In fact, I can save you a tremendous amount of time along your journey through this process of losing it all and ending up in a nursing home because each chapter in this book will provide you with the exact same information you will get from each of these sources.”

It’s a very funny and entertaining book. Its purpose is to use humor to shake people out of denial and into the reality and necessity for long-term care planning. It takes each of 15 common excuses people make to not buy LTC and simply gives the truth you will need to deny in order to stick with your chosen excuse and wind up losing it all and ending up in a nursing home.

If you’re interested in reading this book, visit www.PillsandBills.com or contact me.

Thanks to the new AALTCI 2009 Sourcebook, I’ve just read the most recent summary of state-by-state sales of long-term care insurance policies. The original report was published by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).

After recovering from my initial shock, I decided I shouldn’t be surprised. Texas is already #1 or #2 in the number of unwanted teen pregnancies, people without health insurance, and high school dropouts. Why not in this area, too? (Please forgive me for venting my frustration here.)

The report shows that in 2007 Texas reported one of the lowest numbers of new LTC policies sold in the country (Results are not yet available for the year 2008).

Considering the large number of Texans between the ages of 45 and 65, who can afford LTC premiums of $50-200/month, I suspect that Texas is dead last among the 50 states in terms of the number of LTC policies sold per capita in 2007.

Texas is #1 in people who can and should buy LTC, but don’t. What a dubious honor!

Unless things change drammatically, I fear Texas will be in dire straights when the huge bulge of Baby Boomers now just turning 65 begin to need care in 15 years or so.  Our system is already unprepared and unable to support them. Please see my December, 2008 blog on what care might look like at that time.

This morning, I got a mass email from The Ohlson Group, wanting me to view a free, 10-minute video featuring Raymond J. Ohlson, CLU - President & CEO of The Ohlson Group, Inc., and Maureen Rulison - President of Medicaid & Financial Planning Services of Florida.

Here’s a quote directly from the email, “Now there’s a tool that gives caregivers the right to be compensated by the sick parent and not have it looked upon as a gift by Medicaid. There’s NO 5-year look-back if done with a personal service contract. This additional form of Medicaid planning has opened a new market for advisors dealing with clients who are caregivers. This is an opportunity to positively change lives and be rewarded handsomely in return.”

Here’s the deal: the agent makes a commission by selling an annuity. The family caregiver gets to keep much of their inheritance and not have it hemorrhage away, paying for their parent’s care.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?

In the video, Ms. Rulison even advises families to contact her well in advance of an event requiring care, as if everyone and anyone ought to take this approach.

But my questions are, whose best interest is at heart with this approach?

Why isn’t there as much energy spent educating advisors and public alike, on a much better solution - to purchase long-term care insurance while premiums are reasonable and coverage is possible?

Does the approach above sound Madoff-ian and too good to be true to you? It does to me.

The government is bankrupt (or nearly so). Because of this, trends to cut payments of Medicaid funded long-term care continue. A visit the Center for Long-Term Care Reform (CLTR) will provide you with insight into the magnitude of our indebtedness, how we got into this predicament, and why Medicaid-funded care is inferior. I find the CLTR absolutely invaluable, as source of unbiased knowledge and insight into this looming, extremely imminent crisis.

The party on the shortest end of the stick is the loved one who needs care. In my job, I have visited and toured through dozens of care facilities of all types, and compared notes with dozens of colleagues on the opposite side of the fence who are intake and assessment nurses, home health care agency owners and marketers, directors of nursing, etc. Endless surveys prove that reduced Medicaid payments are correlated to poor care quality. Reimbursements for Medicaid patients simply do not cover costs. There are fewer and fewer Medicaid beds available. This, we all concur, is fact.

I am saddened that our system of government-funded care is falling apart, largely due to exploited Medicaid loopholes like the one described above. These loopholes seek to enable people who have the money to pay for care, to “game the system”, by re-positioning wealth, and having Medicaid pick up the tab.

The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance has announced its annual ranking of the nation’s top LTC producers. For the 5th consecutive year, I am proud to announce that I have again made it on to this list!