November is Long Term Care Awareness Month. As life expectancy increases, due to advances in medicine, chances are likely that you will need paid long-term care in the future.
Roughly 14 million Americans currently rely on long term support services, and that number is projected to nearly double in 30 years.
Long Term Care Policies can be very expensive and difficult to get.
Universal Life with LTC
One insurance option we like at Sequoyah Group is a Universal Life Policy with a Long Term Care Rider. It’s like having two fully portable policies for a single monthly premium. You have life insurance benefit until age 100 as well as coverage for nursing home, assisted living, or in-home nursing care until age 100.
How Does LTC Work?
Most policies provide that if you cannot perform any 2 of your 6 activities of daily living (ADLs) without assistance, then you can access benefits from your long term care policy.
- Eating
- Bathing
- Dressing
- Toileting
- Transferring
- Continence
Some policies also have an automatic benefits trigger when a patient is diagnosed with a mental cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer’s disease, even without losing 2 of their ADLs.
Evaluating Your LTC Plan
Important features to understand when considering Universal Life policies with Long-term Care riders are:
- Can you access the long-term care benefits for at-home care or just when confined to a facility?
- Are the payments made directly to you or the care giver?
- Is the long-term care benefit a “one-time-only”, or does it allow for additional payments?
Average out-of-pocket costs are $140,000 for long term support services (LTSS) in America. Almost 9 percent of families spend over $250,000 on LTSS.
Long Term Care Insurance helps prolong your ability to choose your nursing assistance facility and safeguards your estate from being depleted if you are forced to move into a Medicare-only facility.
Sequoyah Group’s insurance specialists are happy to guide you through the selection process. Contact us.