EP69: Do I Need Long-Term Care Insurance? And Future Trends

<p><em><strong>"More than 40% of people over 65 years old misperceive that Medicare covers long-term care."</strong></em><br /> <em><strong>-Marc A. Cohen, PhD</strong></em><br /> <br /> Long-term care is care across a range of settings and can include medical and non-medical services that assist individuals who cannot care for themselves for extended periods. Also, long-term care is often provided at a person's home, largely by family and friends.<br /> <br /> Thus, it's a challenge to discern whether you even need long-term care insurance coverage. If you can afford this type of policy, it's even harder to know if the insurer and the policy will still be there with adequate coverage whenever you need it.<br /> <br /> In this episode of This Is Getting Old, Marc A. Cohen, PhD., will talk about the basics of how long-term care is paid for now - and discuss future trends for the long-term care insurance industry.<br /> <br /> <strong>Part One of “Do I Need Long-Term Care Insurance? And Future Trends”</strong><br /> <br /> How Is Long-term Care Currently Financed?<br /> <br /> Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) are services designed to help people with functional incapacities, limitations, or cognitive issues. These circumstances limit a person’s ability to perform basic activities of daily living like bathing, dressing, toileting; all the things that one would need to be able to do in order to live independently.<br /> <br /> Unlike acute medical care, with services like hospital care, physician care tends to focus on curing people of specific ailments; long-term services and supports are designed to help people living with chronic illnesses maintain their function or reduce the decline in functioning over time.<br /> <br /> In today’s market, long-term care is financed in three major ways:<br /> <br /> ✅ Out-of-pocket: Disabled older adults and their families pay out-of-pocket for care.<br /> ✅ Medicaid: A federal-state social safety net program. Older adults must qualify for Medicaid by meeting very low inco