What If Your Client Already Needs Long-Term Care?

What You Need to Know

Long-term care insurers may have options.
Some clients could use annuities.
Some private-pay beds convert to Medicaid beds.

Your clients should eat properly, exercise, write thank you notes and buy adequate long-term care insurance when they’re young and healthy.

Sometimes, they don’t. What if Jane Doe, a successful 40-year-old lawyer, walks in and already has severe kidney disease? Can you offer her any options for planning for long-term care costs?

Kim Beil, a vice president at Janney Montgomery Scott, says you can, by considering options based on savings arrangements or deferred annuities.

What it means: It’s important to have ideas about how to help the client in front of you, as well as the hypothetical client who does everything right.

The ideal: Beil, who is head of insured and cash solutions at Janney, holds the certified financial planner (CFP) and certification for long-term care (CLTC) designations.

Beil said in an email interview that advisors should encourage clients to apply for medically underwritten long-term care planning products, such as stand-alone long-term care insurance, by the time they’re around 55.

“If you wait too long, the premiums could significantly increase,” Beil said.

Too often, she said, clients think about long-term care planning when they’re between 60 and 65 and already have health conditions that make getting through underwriting difficult.

Jane Doe: What can you tell a relatively young client who already has a serious chronic condition?

Beil said one strategy to consider is looking hard for stand-alone long-term care insurance.

Someone with a serious health problem will have a hard time getting that at a reasonable price, she said.