Long Term Care. When those 3 words are uttered, what comes to mind?
The Nursing Home?
Don’t want to talk about it?
Someone else’s problem?
It can be an unwelcome addition to a room that is already full of pink elephants. Long Term Care can be defined as the kind of help one may need as a result of prolonged illness or disability. It could also be the outcome that is the result of having lived a long life.
Long Term Care is a continuum of care, housing and services that one may need should they meet the claims requirements that is verified by their medical professional. The care can be delivered in the venue of the client’s choosing, generally in their home, adult day care, assisted living or the nursing home.
Clients and their families decide where their loved ones get assistance; no one dictates to them.
Many don’t realize until it is already happening that nothing pays for Long Term Care expenses. Many are under the mistaken impression that health insurance will pay for Long Term Care expenses. Health insurance is designed to help folks with skilled care that is delivered by a licensed medical professional when there is an expectation of improvement. Disability income is designed to help replace a portion of your income should you become disabled, generally for a finite period of time. Long Term Care insurance can help you by having a stream of income available to pay for care in the venue of your choosing.
It should be said that Long-Term Care expenses can be as much as $250 per day, or about $90,000 per year. By shouldering 100% of this exposure, the client is taking a retail approach; which means that they will pay what the going rates are at that time for care.
Given that one is responsible for LTC expenses, it may be useful to consider a wholesale approach, where a financial instrument is considered to remove all or a portion of the risk from their income and financial plan.
Regardless of what approach you may implement, take the first step and get any questions you may have answered on Long Term Care. Long Term Care Planning isn’t for everyone, but Long Term Care education is.
Corey Rieck is the President and Founder of The Long Term Care Planning Group, a firm that specializes in delivering Long Term Care education and coverage to companies, high net worth individuals and large organizations. Since 2001, Corey has devoted his career to Long Term Care as a result of multiple personal experiences. A neutral provider of Long Term Care Solutions since 2001, Corey brings a unique and comprehensive consultative perspective to this issue. Since 2003, part of his commitment to the Long Term Care Industry includes his having trained over 3,500 advisors from San Francisco to Wall Street on how to properly position Long Term Care to clients through the CLTC organization. (www.ltc-cltc.com) Additionally, he has authored dozens of published industry articles on Long Term Care and has assisted many of the nation’s leading LTC carriers on operational and educational matters.
For over 18 years, The Long-Term Care Planning Group has helped thousands of C suite executives, their families and companies own their future further by understanding and implementing Long Term Care.
Corey and his firm have focused solely on Long Term Care since 2001 as a result of multiple personal experiences.
As neutral LTC solutions architects, Corey and his firm connect their individual and corporate clients with the solutions that best reflect their underwriting, plan design and funding needs after first fully educating them using their proprietary people-based paper-based and web-based systems.
Corey can be reached at: corey@thelongtermcareplanninggroup.com