Why Women Need to Consider Long-Term Care Coverage

Talking to Your Female Clients About Long-Term Care

Despite these challenges, women can take proactive steps with their financial professionals to overcome obstacles presented by long-term care. You should work with your female clients and help them think about their preferences and financial circumstances for long-term care. These considerations include:

The likelihood that they’ll need long-term care
The average cost of care in their geographical area and for how long it will be needed
Whether they would like to receive home health care or receive care in a facility
The effects of inflation

After having this discussion, you should be able to help them better understand the options available to them that can help them cover long-term care expenses. These options include:

Medicare
Medicaid
Self-funding
Long-term care insurance
Hybrid life insurance or annuity with LTC rider

There are issues and expenses associated with each of these options that should be considered during the planning process. For example, Medicare requires inpatient care and availability of a Medicare bed. Meanwhile, Medicaid requires spending down an estate to qualify. Medicaid may not be available to pay for all types of care and for all facilities.

For those who are thinking about self-funding, they need to consider that care costs could reach $100,000-plus a year. Any length of care needed will likely adversely affect their retirement plan.

There are medical qualifications for long-term care insurance, and age affects the cost of long-term care insurance — the younger and healthier the insured, the lower the premium. There are also products that offer simplified underwriting such as an LTC insurance benefit that is combined with an annuity or life insurance policy. These products can increase flexibility and allow you to pass on unused funds through a death benefit and maintain flexibility in the event that you don’t need the long-term care.

Valuable Long-Term Care Tools

Long-term care can be a difficult subject to talk about, but discussing these options and “what if” scenarios with your clients is important, especially since procrastinating could mean fewer options are available to them. Discussing long-term care early, especially as it relates to your clients’ needs, expectations and concerns, will leave you both better prepared.

Carla Urbaszewski is an assistant vice president on Global Atlantic’s Advanced Markets team.