After an intense internal review, the nation’s dominant long-term care insurance company has decided to continue selling policies. However, Genworth Financial Inc. is making major changes in the way it plans to manage its future business including asking regulators for smaller but more frequent premium increases on new policies. Genworth CEO Thomas J. McInerney told institutional investors this morning that [...]
Why is there no catastrophic long-term care insurance? It could benefit millions of middle-income people who are able to pay for a few years of services and supports on their own but need to protect themselves against the risk of a very long period of need that would impoverish all but a handful of us. Even though catastrophic coverage is a [...]
Americans have little idea how long-term supports and services are paid for, according to a new poll by Harris Interactive and the medical publishers HealthDay. Yet, they are worried about the cost, believe most people should buy long-term care insurance, and also favor a new government program to pay some or all of the costs of LTC. It is hard to [...]
Two major new studies have turned the popular perception of dementia on its head. For years, we’ve heard that Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia are on the rise—a prediction that strikes fear in the hearts of both the public and policymakers. But these new reports conclude that dementia rates may be falling, and suggest that some forms of [...]
Genworth Financial, the nation's largest seller of long-term care insurance, is engaged in an “intense, very broad, and deep review of all aspects of our long-term care insurance business,” president and CEO Tom McInerney told investors last week. Industry sources say the firm could withdraw from the market if it does not win regulatory approval for new rate hikes on [...]
It is a cruel paradox: As the cost of long-term care rises and the number of people needing it grows, traditional options for paying for these supports and services are narrowing. Traditional private long-term care insurance is largely disappearing from the marketplace. Reverse mortgages, already something of a niche product, are likely to become harder to get-- especially for those [...]
America’s system for financing long-term care is failing, and the window for creating a payment system that works is rapidly closing. That was the conclusion of a morning-long expert session sponsored last week by the SCAN Foundation. While the participants differed on specific solutions, most agreed on four key issues: The existing system for funding paid long-term supports and services [...]
Long-Term Care insurance too expensive? How about short-term care insurance? In an attempt to make increasingly-costly coverage affordable for middle-class buyers, some insurers are selling policies that offer bare-bones personal care benefits—sometimes as little as $50-a-day for three months. These policies are more affordable, but are they worth the money? Bankers Life and Casualty Co. has been selling these low-cost, low-benefit [...]
In the past few months, important events and circumstances have highlighted the need for an effective, sustainable way to finance the often-astronomical costs of long-term care services and supports. The growing political and financial pressures on Medicaid--the state/federal program that funds nearly half of all paid long-term care; the deepening problems in the private long-term care insurance market; and the demise of the CLASS Act--the failed attempt to [...]
The long-term care insurance industry is in big trouble. Consumers aren't buying. Carriers are dropping out of the market. And those that are staying are raising premiums, cutting discounts, and eliminating products--all of which are discouraging even more consumers from buying. What's gone wrong? The industry has two fundamental problems. A long-standing one--buyers are dropping coverage less often than the industry predicted. And a more [...]