It's Never Too Late For an LTC Plan
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"She was 80 years old, single woman, raised dogs. She has been married eight times, 'just like Liz Taylor'", as she said. So, she was quite the character." - Christy Johnson
On this episode of The Insurance Experts, I interview Christy Johnson who is both a long term care (LTC) and short term care (STC) insurance advocate. STC, also sometimes called recovery care, is an alternative for LTC in situations where the client can't qualify for LTC due to age or health.
STC is a newer product to the LTC landscape and comes in varieties with the insurance companies testing the market with different underwriting approaches and plan designs. STC is available in about 40 states. There are several states that have different views on how it should be regulated because of the lack of product standardization, and as generally a senior markets product, making sure that the consumer understands all of the terms of the policy.
In the video, Christy shares her personal story and then how an 80 year old client approaches her with a desire to put an insurance plan in place. Her client had been told that she was too old to qualify as most long term care options become unavailable at age 80. In this client's case, the client getting about 1 year of coverage made sense as a foundation to her overall plan. After all, the first year of benefits is the most important that the client would receive and would buy her time to figure out what to do if she ran through the money. This solution primarily paid in assisted living or nursing home facilities, but also had a more limited home health care and prescription benefit.
It's important when using STC solutions to read carefully the policy language, premiums structure, explain rate increase risk, and describe the benefits accurately because there are a range of differences in these products. This is where LTC and STC specialists can help you and your clients.
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