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Get The Best Long Term Care Rates
Author : Steven Guptha
Submitted : 2012-02-16 Word Count : 2 Popularity: Not Rated
Tags: long term care quote, long term care insurance, ltc quote, long term quote, understand long term care
Despite our feelings when rate increases occur, insurance is a funny thing. The pricing of insurance, including Long Term Care insurance, is very different from most other products you buy. Let's say you want to buy a T.V. Well, you can research various stores and sources of that particular T.V. and find out who has the better rate. Long Term Care insurance is different in that the rate will be identical for a given carrier and plan (same policy settings, benefit type, etc). Whether you go through a licensed LTC agent or directly to the carrier, it's going to be the same rate.
The problem is that we must first figure out what type of plan we want, which carrier provides the best rate, and what policy settings are optimal for our situation. That's the tricky part when it comes to finding the best Long Term Care insurance rate. If you go direct to one carrier, they can (or better yet, will) show you only their plans. This may or may not be the best situation for you. With so many carrier and plan options on the market, the chance of stumbling on the best rate for you this way is very small. Sort of like throwing a dart at a dartboard. When you're dealing with potentially thousands of dollars, that's not a good strategy. So what works better?
We have a two part solution to finding the best Long Term Care rates on the market. Let's break it down and start with our first item, Optimal LTC plan settings.
Optimal Plan Settings. Long Term Care actually has relatively few variables to choose from when selecting a plan compared to health or life insurance. These variables can really swing the rates and probably half of the people that are paying too much in the LTC market are doing so because of poor plan settings. We go in depth into each variable as well as our Optimum Plan Settings but let's give a rough sketch here:
Waiting period. This deals with how long you have to have a qualifying LTC event before benefits kick in. With the waiting period, aim for longer such as 90 days since Medicare will can provide up to 100 days with a supplement and most people can afford 3 months of Long Term Care but not 3 years. This equivalent of a "deductible" can help offset the rates.
Daily amount. This is the amount of benefit you will receive per day and it may fluctuate according to setting (nursing home, home health, or cash). Two points. It rarely makes sense in insurance to insure 100% of a risk...it becomes too expensive. Aim for 80% of the expected daily cost. Secondly, a monthly amount may provide for flexibility if actual expenses vary during a month's time.
Length of coverage. This is how long you will receive the Daily Amount if you meet qualifying event requirements. 80% of LTC events can be managed with a 3 year policy. Indefinite coverage is great but the cost will go up pretty significantly.
Once we have our Optimum Plan Settings chosen, we need one place to run multiple major carriers and plans against each other. This is key. Many traditional LTC agents will run a few because it's so cumbersome with each additional carrier. Our system takes this issue away by automatically quoting dozens of plans side by side and finding the best rate and policy combination for you. We make sure to deal only with the strong carriers on the market. What's the point of going with an inferior carrier that lowballs the price at the time of enrollment only to raise the rates significantly once you're "locked" into the policy. Long Term Care rates are based on age so it's important to "buy well" from the beginning. Switching plans can cost you significantly. This brings us to the last point.
Buy Long Term Care early to lock in the best rates. LTC rates are primarily based on age at the time of enrollment. You can save significant amounts of money for each year younger that you buy. We provide more information in the "Cost of Waiting" article but suffice it to say, in order to get the best Long Term Care rates, the early bird gets the worm. I'm trying to find some clever way to translate "worm" into thousands of dollars of savings but you get the picture.
Author's Resource Box
Dennis Jarvis is a licensed Long Term Care insurance broker with extensive knowledge of the LTC plan market. Quote Long Term Care Insurance
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