How to cope with soaring long-term care rates
Posted on 08 December 2010
By Mark Miller
Permanent URL of this article: http://retirementrevised.com/money/how-to-cope-with-soaring-long-term-care-rates
If you have long-term care insurance or have been shopping for it, 2010 has been a year of unnerving sticker shock. Major insurance companies have been seeking rate hikes as high as 40 percent on existing policies, and many carriers are reevaluating their products and pricing. One major carrier – Metlife – decided to stop writing new policies altogether.
The long-term care (LTC) insurance industry is under pressure, but it’s still a product worth keeping in your retirement plan.
Medicare covers only a small portion of long-term care needs. The federal government will launch a new public option for LTC in 2013 under the new health care reform law — the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act (CLASS). But the benefits under CLASS will be modest, and the program might not survive an expected assault on health care reform in Congress.
How can policyholders and prospective buyers cope? I offer up four strategies for coping with LTC rate shock this week at Reuters.com.
