Your Long-Term Care Insurance Plan: How to Find an Affordable Policy without Sacrificing Coverage

A vital ingredient in any successful long-term care insurance plan is to have an affordable policy without sacrificing good coverage. If you receive quotes from several highly rated insurers and yet find that the premiums are still too much to bear, there is no need to panic and assume that long term care insurance costs too much. You can just adjust the benefit amounts of the original quotes to place the premiums more in line with your expectations, and ensure an affordable policy.

Know the Costs of Long-term Care Where You Live

One of the many ways to lower premium costs is to make sure that you know what the actual costs of care are in your area. There are lots of statistics used when talking about long-term care costs and often these are based on national averages. The actual cost of home care, nursing homes and assisted living facilities in your particular area may be much lower. You can find out about local long-term care costs by simply downloading the latest Genworth Cost of Care Guide or by calling a few local home care agencies and long-term care facilities to ask for comparison rates.

Adjust Your Benefit Period

Another different method to lower long-term care insurance premiums is to use a shorter benefit period. Many consumers feel that unlimited benefits are necessary for good coverage. A recent study published by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance in their 2009 Sourcebook discovered that only eight percent of those people who bought a three year benefit period exhausted the policy and yet still need care. Only a little over one percent of those with a five-year benefit period will see their claims closed due to policy exhaustion. This can only mean that lowering the benefit period is actually a practical way to lower insurance costs without giving up vital coverage.

Reexamine the Elimination Period

Another way to bring down long-term care insurance premiums is to increase the elimination period (the number of days after your care begins that precedes the insurance company’s first payment of claims).

Almost ninety percent of individual continuous care insurance policies use an elimination period between ninety and one hundred days based on the same 2009 Sourcebook referenced above. If your initial quotes used a thirty-day or sixty-day elimination period, you may have the ability to significantly lower the premiums by choosing a ninety-day elimination period instead. Remember that there are other ways that an experienced long-term care specialist can help make this kind of insurance more affordable for you. If you ask for suggestions on lowering your premiums, the specialist will be happy to work with you to craft a long-term care insurance policy that is effective and affordable.