Everyone should eventually add a long-term health care policy to their private health insurance and retirement needs. It’s most likely the important retirement planning you ever do–even if you don’t need it.

People are living longer. Over half of those who are 65-years-old today will need long-term care at some point of life. However, long-term care insurance is often considered to be just a nursing home insurance because it covers those who need help with basic tasks like bathing and eating.
Of course, no one wants to think of themselves as old and infirm, let alone spending the end of their life in a nursing home.  This unpleasant probability possibly explains why so few people (presently only 4.5 million individual policies are in force) buy long-term care insurance. Yet, less than 15 percent of long-term care is in a nursing home situation.

Ironically, it is this type of insurance that can actually keep people out of a nursing home. A long-term care insurance policy is much more than a nursing home policy. It typically covers some or all of the costs of assisted-living facilities and home care situations, as well as the traditional nursing home care.  It can cover the  care for someone dealing with a chronic health condition that needs assistance with basic daily living.

What to look for in a long-term policy:

• Policy costs vary widely from state to state. Base your costs are where you plan to retire, instead of where you’re living now.
• Such policies are not cheap and you can slash prices by buying at an younger age. Financial experts suggest that when you turn 50 to start looking for a policy. A good goal to set for purchasing a policy is age 58.  Don’t leave it off for too much later because half of policy applicants in their 70s or 80s are denied coverage for health reasons.
• Financial experts suggest that a “short, fat policy” (good coverage for a shorter time period) is better than lean coverage for a lifetime. A 20-year study indicates that only 10 percent of claimants need long-term care for more than five years.
• Check to see if your state offers a long-term partnership plan. These plans protect some or all of your assets being depleted before being considered Medicaid-eligible. You can turn to Medicaid, if your private coverage isn’t enough, without spending down your assets.
• Look into a hybrid option where life insurance is combined with long-term care. If you don’t use the long-term care, the money rolls over into your death benefit.
• You can save 10-30% percent if you and your spouse buy policies together.
• Make sure (as much as you possibly can) that you’re insuring with a company that will be around in 30 or 40 years. Stick with insurance companies of a high financial strength ration. You can check on companies’ ratings through StandardAndPoors.com or Moodys.com.

Long-term health care is a protection. You are protecting yourself from the only thing worse than long-term care, which is needing it and not being able to afford it.

CEOs Helping with Health Insurance

Chief Executive Officers of leading American companies with nearly 10 million employees convened to improve America’s dire health insurance problems. Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs, unleashed their new health care policy today aimed at providing affordable health insurance options for every American citizen and establishing a reliable and secure public safety net.

Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications, Ivan Seidenberg, stated, “The problem with the health care market in this country is that it doesn’t really function as a market—leaving major consumer needs unmet, costs unchecked by competition, and basic practices untouched by the productivity revolution that has transformed every other sector of the economy.

The policy offers changes that would make the health care system more transparent and understandable to American consumers. The changes would make the system more efficient, while having more marketplace options for employers, as well as individuals, to acquire coverage.

The policy is built upon the following concepts:

Go to http://www.businessroundtable.org/pdf/HealthPlan-Prepublication.pdf for the complete plan.

Business Roundtable President John Castellani said, “Technology, competition and innovation can be the most powerful weapons in the fight to provide every American reliable, affordable health insurance.”

Is Socialized Medicine the Answer?

Americans are rightly worried about the economy…and it doesn’t seem to be getting better fast. One of the chief domestic worries Americans is the high cost of health insurance. Health insurance costs are rising considerably faster than wages and income and presently over 47,000,000 million Americans are going without it. An alarming statistic from the U.S. Census Bureau is that the largest group of Americans to be declining employer-sponsored insurance has a yearly income around $75,000.

To put this in perspective the American 2008 poverty level for a family of four is $22,200. Add or subtract $3,600 for each person to find the level for your own personal life. Since $35,600 for a family of eight is considered poverty level and if Americans homes with a yearly income of $75,000 are finding it difficult to obtain or retain health insurance, America is indeed in dire straits.

The health insurance issue quickly became a political focus in the 2008 campaign. Republicans says that tax incentives and eradicating outdated tax breaks are the answer to making health insurance more affordable. Democrats are in favor of socialized (publicly-funded) medicine that will have an approximate $110 billion price tax while quickly assuring Americans that it won’t be funded by raising taxes on middle class families. Presently, the U.S. has a safety-net system which provides hospital, community health centers, and medical providers to give emergency care to individuals regardless of their ability to pay. Much of the safety-nets’ revenues are financed through federal, state, and local funds and are influenced by those policies. However, many of the safety net hospitals and clinics are floundering because policy-makers are reallocating such funds to other areas.

America is the only, wealthy industrialized nation that doesn’t provide universal health care for their citizens. However, it seems advisable to review the successes, or lack of it, of other industrialized countries, such as England, Canada, or Australia, with their socialized medicine system. We definitely need to make sure it is the right answer to our health insurance problem before we jump on the band-wagon of socialized medicine with universal coverage as its goal.