Long-term care insurance covers any help needed if you have a chronic illness or disability and are unable to care for yourself. This care may be received in a nursing home or in your own home and covers a wide range of services beyond medical and nursing care. These services include visiting nurses, meal delivery, help with chores and even help for caregivers.
Long-term care is costly. Most policies that cover these services are indemnity policies that pay a fixed amount for each day that care is received (ranging from $50 to hundreds of dollars per day). Daily benefits for at-home care are at the lower end of the range, while nursing home care is the most expensive.
Buying long-term care insurance
If you are buying a long-term care policy, consider the following:
- Which services exactly are covered (such as nursing home care, home health care, adult daycare and help for caregivers)
- Daily payments for each service
- How long the benefits last
- Maximum lifetime benefit (if any)
- Maximum length of coverage for each period of confinement (in a nursing home or at home)
- How long the period of confinement is before premiums are waived
- Waiting period for pre-existing conditions
- What assessments or exams are needed
- Whether the policy is guaranteed renewable
- Age range for enrollment
- Whether there is a waiver-of-premium (This states that the insurer will keep up your policy without premiums if you become totally disabled before age 60 or 65.)
- Whether the policy has a nonforfeiture benefit (This protects a portion of your benefits if you stop paying premiums.)
- Whether the policy has an inflation adjustment feature (This increases your benefits by a small percentage each year. The increase helps ensure that coverage bought today will pay for the cost of long-term care in the future.)
- Cost of the policy
Updated 01/21/11
