Category Archives: long term care insurance prices california

Long Term Insurance Quotes

If paying for long term care is on your mind, you’ve come to the right place for good information and free long term care insurance quotes.  If you want to get started immediately, contact us now for a free quote, with no obligation.

However, if you’d like more information, we invite you to read the next 300 words.  In just two minutes, we’ll point out 3 things you need to know when you compare long term care products and pricing.

The Top 3 Things You Need to Know About Getting Long Term Care Insurance Quotes in California

We feel obligated to provide a few words of advice so you are armed with good information when you’re investigating long term care insurance costs and options.

When you ask for California long term care insurance quotes:

  • Be sure you are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges.  This means that there are many different options and a myriad of long term care products available.  Be sure that the product selections are the same when comparing quotes. 
  • Then, take into consideration the quality of the company as well.  You need to make sure that the insurance company will still be there years from now, when you need it.   In addition, you need to understand whether the premiums can be raised and, if so, how often and by how much. 
  • Lastly, consider products other than just straight long term care insurance offerings.  For example, long term care annuities and the hybrid of life insurance with an LTC rider are really hot now.  Find out whether either would be a good fit for you. 

How to Get a California Long Term Care Insurance Quote

Whether you want a quick quote to compare to others you are gathering or you want to ask questions and get professional guidance, we have a team of highly trained professional ready to take your call. 

Of course, there’s no cost or obligation when you call to learn about California long term care insurance products or to get a quote.  We look forward to serving you.

 

Who is California Long Term Care Insurance Services, Inc.?

Who is California Long Term Care Insurance Services, Inc?

We have become California’s largest independent long term care insurance brokerage. The organization is run by three professionals who, together, have 100 years of exclusive long term care insurance experience, and have sold $50,000,000 of long term care insurance premiums. We expect to continue to grow over many years.

The brokerage has appointed agents statewide. Most of these agents have had many years of long term care insurance experience, and as a group, they are among the most highly trained in the industry. They represent many of the top long term care insurance companies. The agents are given the ability and motivation to custom-tailor a plan to a client’s individual needs.

We specialize exclusively in long term care solutions. There has been a growth of different products intended to solve long-term care problems, and we understand how all of them work. Long term care insurance has become a very complicated product to understand. We believe you deserve expertise to guide your long term care decision, just as you would utilize the expertise of an attorney to guide your estate planning.

Our Mission

The mission of California Long Term Care Insurance Services is to enable Californians to retain their dignity, independence, and assets in the increasingly likely event that they will become sick or injured and need long term care.

Our Goal

Our goal is to give service to our clients the way we would want an agent to give service to us. We strive to have integrity in what we say and do, keep the promises we make, and respect the dignity of our clients. We believe that we are rendering a service that is a needed and essential one for many Californians.

Contact Us

P.O. 460640
San Francisco CA 94146
info@cltcinsurance.com
Phone: (800) 303-1527
Fax (650) 692-5204

November is Long Term Care Awareness Month

How will you pay for Long Term Care services?

People work a lifetime to accumulate assets to see them through retirement. Unfortunately, relying on those assets to fund long-term care services may mean:
• Selling stocks or property, cashing in CDs or dipping into 401(k) or savings accounts
• Paying unexpected capital gains tax, income tax and potential surrender charges
• Foregoing returns the liquidated assets were expected to generate
• Abandoning plans to leave an inheritance to children and grandchildren

Planning now means having better choices later.

Long-Term Care Insurance Statistics That Affect Your Planning

In a recent Morningstar article on Long Term Care statistics, author Christie Benz, Morningstar’s director of personal finance and author of 30-Minute Money Solutions, outlined industry statistics you should know when planning your insurance needs in retirement.

According to Benz, “Ultimately, the decision about whether to purchase long-term-care insurance is a highly personal one, dependent on an individual’s or couple’s asset level and desire to leave a bequest, health history, and the peace of mind derived from having the coverage, among other factors.”

So what does some of the long-term care insurance and services look like by the numbers Benz researched?

  • 8 Million People experience problems with daily living activities, i.e., bathing, dressing, washing, eating, and other basic needs.
  • 13 Million Adults have difficulty living independently.
  • 44% of men will need long-term care services during their lifetime.
  • 58% of women will need those same services during their lifetime.
  • 4% is the 5 year annual inflation rate in nursing home costs for private and semi-private rooms. If you do not have an inflation rider on your policy, it is worth 4% less each year you own it.
  • $5,518 is the median total household wealth of people that have lived in a nursing home for 6 months or more. Do you think asset protection is important now?
  • $450 Billion is the estimate value of unpaid care provided by friends and family members caring for a loved one.
  • $7.8 Billion is the amount of claims paid for long-term care in 2014.
  • 45% is the number of applications denied to applicants’ age 70-79 who put off planning and now have health issues to manage.
  • 100% if you have not started planning, the time is now.

Contact your California Long Term Care Insurance Services specialist today for a no obligation conversation about your options. Start by filling out the form to the right and downloading your Free Guide.

Source: http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=715947&part=1

Dealing with Long Term Care Insurance Rate Increases

by Louis H. Brownstone 

At first, many carriers saw long term care insurance as a terrific marketing opportunity and rushed into the market beginning in 1988 with competitive prices. For years, agents and brokers sold policies with the understanding that the carriers had appropriately priced their products, and that the chances for rate increases were small. However, the industry was a young one, and no one knew for sure whether or not the pricing would prove to be accurate.

The carriers then broadened the appeal of long term care insurance in the mid-1990s by including home health care as a major benefit, with little increase in premium. These benefits were very attractive to consumers, and they eventually led to a large number of home health care claims.

This, in turn, stressed the profitability of long term care insurance products. By the late 1990s, other problems arose, and carriers saw that their pricing assumptions were incorrect for four major reasons:

  1. Interest rates were well below expectations so that carriers made less gain investing the premiums they received;
  2. Unlike life insurance, lapse rates were extremely low, creating more future policyholder claim potential;
  3. Claims were more frequent, with higher costs and of longer duration than expected;
  4. These factors, in turn, led to higher governmental reserve requirements, tying up assets.

Until now, insurance commissioners have been very resistive of carrier requests for big rate increases because they would impose extreme hardship on senior Americans with limited income and assets. Their emphasis was to protect the consumer, which was the major part of their job. They believed that insurance carriers had created their own problems by underpricing their products in order to sell more. They “made their beds” and needed to sleep in them. Insurance is a gamble, and the carriers have lost, so they said.

But there has been a major change in thinking in the last five years. Insurance commissioners have realized that they need to provide carriers enough flexibility in pricing to enable them to pay future claims. Consumers in turn needed to be confident that their claims would be paid. They would be furious if their thousands of dollars of investment turned out to be wasted.

Insurance commissioners, therefore, needed to grant significant rate increases to protect consumers, and have done so. Because there was such a long period of time in which any rate increases which were granted were small, the rate increases needed now have only become greater as long term care insurance policies have matured.

This has led insurance commissioners to grant one-time rate increases as high as 80% to 95% on major blocs of policies. Carriers have to prove that their requests for rate increases are actually warranted.

In many instances, insurance commissioners are insisting that carriers offer benefit changes which can ameliorate or even prevent any increase in premium. These options can or cannot be acceptable alternatives, depending on the current benefits in a policy..

This discussion should not end without mentioning that the long term care insurance industry has learned a great deal in the last thirty-plus years and that current rates should be far more stable. Hybrid and linked policies often have guaranteed rates, but this may not be such a big point of difference if traditional long term care insurance prices remain stable. Because the hybrid and linked products contain two benefits and the traditional long term care product has only one benefit, the traditional long term care product will probably remain the less expensive alternative.

Have You Accepted The Default Long-Term Care plan?

In a recent article on Marketwatch.com by Retirement Reporter Elizabeth O’Brien, she discussed what the costs for long-term care insurance look like, and how people plan for their health care needs in the future when they are no longer able to care for themselves.

In O’Brien’s article, she references the average cost for a 55-year old couple on a common LTC plan to be around $5,000 per year in premium dollars. While that is a sizable amount for people to budget with insurance, O’Brien comments, “Consumers should think of long-term care insurance as one way to help defray the cost of home health aides or a care facility and to protect their hard-earned nest eggs in the process…”

The article continues on covering the common misconceptions about Medicare and custodial care. Unfortunately, many people believe Medicare covers long-term care expenses. The reality is, while Medicare may cover up to 100 days of skilled nursing, it is not going to cover long-term custodial care. There is a difference between skilled care and custodial care.

O’Brien offers from her research that the median annual cost for private rooms runs over $91,000, and a home health aide could run upwards of $45,000 or more. Without a solid nest egg in place, these costs could easily wipe out any savings available to most families.

An interesting point in the article is how people could end up with a “default long-term care plan”.

“Everybody has a long-term care plan, said Eileen Dunn, a geriatric care manager with Associates of Clifton Park, a Clifton Park, N.Y.-based company that sells long-term care and other insurance to clients of financial advisers. Those who do not consciously make a plan are on the “default plan,” Dunn said. “When something happens, you’re not going to have a choice.” That is, you’re not going to have a choice but to spend down your assets” (O’Brien, 2015, pp. 7)

If you have accepted the default plan as your option, then you should at least research “spend down” requirements for your State, so you know what will happen and how it will affect your family. You can usually get these requirements from the State welfare offices.

The choice is yours, make yours!

Choice 1: I am willing to lose the things I worked for in life.

Choice 2: I want to protect my assets and have a choice.

If you selected Choice 2 and would rather have options in your care, fill out the form to the right and contact a California Long Term Care specialist today to get the conversation started.

Reference:

O’Brien, E., (June 2015) Can you afford $5,000 a year for long-term care insurance? Retrieved 8/9/2015 at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/can-you-afford-5000-a-year-for-long-term-care-insurance-2015-06-25

Long Term Care Insurance Cost

You can likely guess that long term care insurance costs might be a valid concern while planning for the future.  After all, in California, the average cost of a shared room in a nursing home is about $300 and for a private room, the cost is about $350 per day.  So, how much is the insurance that pays for nursing home care?

We’ll talk about the cost of long term care insurance, but first we need to be on the same page about what it costs if you or a loved one needs long term care. 

Long Term Care Costs

If you haven’t looked at the numbers yet, this is going to be a shocker.  These numbers are for the state of California.

  • Pulling in the $300/$350 per day, that’s $109,500 to $127,750 a year, on average. 
  • High cost of living areas like San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles demand much higher payments – even up to $497 per day, which is $181,405 per year. 
  • The average stay in a nursing home is 2.5 years.  That’s $273,750, on average, for a shared room. 
  • If a couple needs care, the costs are doubled.  That’s $547,500. 
  • Shockingly, these fees are for basic care; they don’t include personal products like Depends, sitters and attendants, or getting your hair or nails done. 
  • And, lastly, an important question:  With health care costs skyrocketing at more than 4% annually, how much will that nursing home cost by the time you need it?  Yikes! 

Long Term Care Insurance Costs

This is actually good news:

  • All the premiums, you pay over your entire lifetime, will likely be less than the cost of one year in a nursing home. 
  • You can pick a long term insurance policy that fits your budget.  If premiums are going to take food off your table, you shouldn’t buy it, but, otherwise, there are a myriad of ways to make it work. 
  • New products have been developed which feature long-term care riders and chronic illness riders as a part of a life insurance policy or an annuity.
  • Long term care annuities allow you to get ALL your money back if you don’t use it to pay for LTC. 
  • Costs depend on how much protection you buy, the options you select, your age at purchase, and your health when you apply for coverage. 
  • Costs vary widely, depending on your coverage selections as well as your age and health.  For example, long term care insurance costs may range from a $1,500 to $7,000+, depending on your individual situation and goals. 

We know the numbers can be overwhelming and you’re not sure what numbers will end up applying to you.  But, we can’t provide specific information for everyone on a website, so we offer a free information conversation.

You are entitled to a free, no-obligation analysis of your individual situation.  Contact us to find out your long term care insurance cost and plan options.  Be sure to ask about long term care annuities as well.  Call now to get the answers you need so you can stop worrying.

California Long Term Care Plans Cost More Today!

News flash!  

California Long Term Care plans cost more today than they did 20 years ago! While it is true that the cost of LTCi insurance has gone up in recent years, see all the press releases, so has the cost of care. Cost is relative to everything, remember what you were paying for medical coverage in 1994? How about a gallon of gas? Now, think about your income in 1994 and today. Everything is relative right?  This doesn’t negate the need to plan ahead and prepare for something that will affect 7 out of 10 Americans.

The interesting thing about the 7 out of 10 is that it doesn’t differentiate between economic classes. The need doesn’t change for someone earning $50,000 annually or someone earning  $150,000 annually. Loss of your ADL’s or cognitive issues could care less about your income. Having the funds available to pay for care is a necessity not a luxury. Not having a plan is a plan, just not a good one. Cost of care will continue to rise forcing you to spend more to get quality care. You can pay that difference yourself or get some help from an insurance carrier to pick up the majority of the bill. Choosing to work with an insurance carrier will definitely help lower your California Long Term Care plans cost.

Designing a personalized plan to protect your family and assets doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice today. With medical advances and the odds being in your favor of living longer and needing care it is important to protect as much as you can. A good friend of mine has been known to say that people live on budgets all the time; why would that change if you were in need of care? The question is would $2,000 or $3,000 make a difference in the care you received? So no matter what your income, the risk remains the same, now is the time to look through the different your options for California Long Term Care plans. Cost will vary but you can  put together a plan so when the need arises you have the ability to receive care and protect your family.

To speak to a representative or schedule an appointment, simply fill out and submit the short form to the right.

Support Beyond Purchasing Long Term Care Insurance

It is often hard for consumers to see the benefits of purchasing Long Term Care Insurance.  They also often overlook the value in working with an agent and an agency that specializes in LTC.  Our work as an agency definitely does not end with our client’s initial decision in purchasing Long Term Care Insurance. Two recent real-life experiences illustrated why a specialist agent and agency can make a difference:

  •  A client called and said he needed to use the policy for nursing home care.  He said he had used home care services for the past 6 months.  His health had deteriorated and he felt a facility was a better fit for him now.  I asked why he didn’t use the coverage for the home care help.  He thought it wasn’t covered because he had hired a private caregiver.  He mistakenly believed that only aides from a home care agency qualified for reimbursement.  He was able to get all of the long term care services covered.  He moved to an assisted living facility and his wife lives in the independent living unit nearby. 
  • A client called and asked to review her coverage.  During the conversation she said she thought she may need to use the insurance sometime in the future.  She described her circumstances and I realized that she might qualify use the insurance now.  I convinced her to file a claim. This activated the Care Coordination service.   They helped her find caregivers and put together a plan of care.  The plan of care outlines the details of needs and how they are met by the aide and various community services like Meals on Wheels.  Her care is covered by the insurance policy. 

We at California Long Term Care Insurance Services, Inc have been working with these types of policies for over 20 years. An agent or agency that does not have as much exposure to Long Term Care insurance plans may not have realized the opportunity to help the client use the insurance.  In both these cases we helped protect our clients’ income and assets but also improved the quality of their lives. We helped make their decision of purchasing Long Term Care Insurance a great tool in improving their quality of life when they most needed it.

Our LTCI specialists make your shopping experience easy, by helping compare the costs and benefits of policies from select insurance companies. More importantly, our agency will be there for you beyond purchasing Long Term Care Insurance. To speak to a representative or schedule an appointment, simply fill out the short form on the right and start with your Free consumer guide or contact us.

This podcast might save you or your family a lot of money and heartache!

Affordable LTCI Premiums

Katie O’ Rourke
Managing Partner

Our own Managing Partner, Katie O’ Rourke, was featured as an expert guest on the Essential Boomer. Katie is an honorary boomer and as we all know, a 30 year veteran of the insurance industry and Managing Partner of California Long Term Care insurance Services. In this podcast, Katie shared the benefit of her expertise in long-term care insurance as she provided frank and insightful answers to the following questions:

 

• What is Long Term Care?
• Where is Long Term Care typically provided?
• What are the odds of me needing long-term care?
• What does long term care cost?
• Wouldn’t a lot of families be able to provide the necessary resources?
• Don’t Medicare and health insurance provide some kind of coverage for long-term care?
• When is the best time to investigate long-term care insurance?
• What is the qualification process for Long Term Care insurance
• If somebody has a pre-existing condition, are they still able to obtain long-term care insurance?
• How do the plans work and what’s the cost?
• What are the different flavors of long-term care insurance?
• What should I look for in a policy?
• Are there any tax breaks with long-term care insurance?
• Can I get a plan at work?

This podcast (http://essentialboomer.guide/katie/ ) might save you or your family a lot of money and heartache!

Listen to this very informative podecast and then contact us with any further questions you may have. We are here for you!