Understanding Long-Term Health Care Insurance: Considerations for your and your clients?

Should I or shouldn’t I? This is the question I hear so often about Long-Term Health Care (LTHC) insurance from clients and from friends.

Unlike life insurance, which provides a death benefit, LTHC insurance is intended to defray the cost of dependent care in one’s lifetime. It is purchased with the hope and intent of protecting our nest egg from the enormous cost of nursing care so that our spouses and children will have something left to live on or something left to inherit. But the concerns are many: LTHC insurance is expensive, the costs continue to rise exponentially, it may not cover enough and you may not live long enough to recoup what you spend on premiums. The policies are also confusing. And yet, some view LTHC insurance as more valuable than life insurance.

How do these plans work, who can get coverage and what are the benefits? How can we answer these questions for ourselves and for our clients?

Click here to read more of Attorney, Phyllis Horn Epstein’s article in the
May/June 2024 issue of The Practical Lawyer Magazine