Los Angeles; July 2, 2013 – A front page article in this mornings issue of The Wall Street Journal overlooks some very significant facts according to the director of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.
“To sell newspapers and get people to watch television news, the media must focus on disasters and scary news,” declares Jesse Slome, executive director of the long term care insurance industry trade group. “To be fair, The Journal has contained many positive stories extolling the virtues of long term care insurance, though never on the front-page.”
The national long term care insurance expert commented on the article appearing today by stating long-term care insurance premiums have risen because more people are claiming benefits than expected and interest rates settled and remain at historic lows. “Investment returns on policyholder premiums account for between 40-and-60 percent of anticipated revenue,” Slome explained. “That’s especially true today when consumers chose to increase policy benefits by five percent compounded annually, or the ‘gold standard’ as the Journal referred to it. Gold is expensive.”
Slome notes that regrettably overlooked entirely by the story (Long-Term-Care Insurance Leaves Customers Groping) is the fact that in 2012, insurers paid out $6.6 billion in long-term care insurance claim benefits to 264,000 policyholders. “The largest (still open) claim has reached $1.8 million paid over almost 16 years,” Slome reports. “The policy was purchased for $881 annually with premiums paid for three years until the claim began.”
“Long-term care insurance is not a universal solution,” Slome admitted. One must be able and willing to afford premiums. More importantly, one must meet health requirements imposed by insurers to avoid healthy applicants subsidizing unhealthy ones.
“I like to paraphrase Winston Churchill,” Slome continued. ”It has been said that long-term care insurance is the worst form of protection except all the others that have been tried.”
Consumers seeking long term care insurance costs who wish to connect with a designated specialist, a member of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, can also visit the organization’s website or call 818-597-3227.
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