The growing shortage of paid caregivers has become increasingly apparent over the past several months. Now, we are seeing evidence of the most direct consequence of that scarcity: The cost of care, especially for those living at home, is rising faster than it has in years. According to the newly released Genworth cost of care survey, the cost of homemaking [...]
Recent articles in the journal Health Affairs attempted to attach numbers to a problem that millions of American families are intimately aware of: Many middle-income older adults cannot afford to pay their out-of-pocket costs for health care and senior housing. And the problem is going to get worse once the Baby Boomers begin to hit their late 70s and early [...]
Genworth, once the largest seller of long-term care insurance policies, has announced that it has stopped selling individual stand-alone coverage, as well as immediate annuities, through brokers and agents. Company officials say the decision is temporary, but for now it will sell only through direct-to-consumer channels or through employers or affinity groups--currently a very small market. Independent brokers fear the [...]
Are family caregivers—and care recipients--getting younger? Are men more likely to care for parents and other relatives than in the past? Perhaps, according to a recent survey by the long-term care insurance company Genworth. The survey found that about half of family caregivers now are men. That’s significantly higher than the 40 percent in other studies. At the same time, [...]
Only about 89,000 people bought private long-term care insurance in 2016, a nearly 14 percent decline from 2015, according to an industry survey. Nearly all were bought in the individual market, though about 15,000 people purchased coverage through their jobs. The sales decline continues a stunning trend. At the market’s peak in 2002, consumers bought 750,000 traditional policies, eight times [...]
The way you pay for long-term care insurance policies may be about to change in a big way. Genworth, the biggest seller of stand-alone long-term care insurance, is about to ask state insurance regulators for permission to fundamentally revise the way it structures premiums. Instead of holding premiums flat for several years followed by big double-digit rate hikes, it wants [...]
Last month, Genworth, the biggest seller of long-term care insurance policies in the US, announced it was being acquired by a Chinese investor, China Oceanwide Holdings. I spoke with Genworth CEO Tom McInerney about the deal, the future of long-term care insurance, and the role of government in covering true catastrophic risk. Here is an edited version of our conversation. [...]
Genworth Financial, the largest seller of long-term care (LTC) insurance policies, has agreed to be acquired by a privately-held Chinese investment firm. At the same time, it announced it will reserve an additional $400 million to $450 million against future long-term care claims. The twin Oct 23 announcements are further indication of just how brutal the long-term care insurance business [...]
Imagine you are 75 and suffer a stroke. You have some financial assets but, suddenly facing a lifetime of unexpected personal care needs, you are worried about outliving your money. You never bought long-term care insurance and could never pass underwriting that would allow you to buy now. What do you do? You could tap your home equity with a [...]
Yesterday, the CEO of the nation’s largest long-term care insurance company, Genworth, acknowledged the US needs a new model of LTC insurance that includes some government role. Tom McInerney estimated that between half and two-thirds of Americans simply cannot afford to buy insurance in the traditional private market. A 50-something can expect to pay an average of $2,500-$3,000-a-year for a typical [...]