You stated, “Scott, I talked with insurance agent about LTC and he told me to wait until I was about 60 years old to apply for this. Thanks for the post.”

Is there a reason why this agent thinks you should wait to get LTCi until age 60? Will you not have enough in net worth until age 60?

Scott

If you’d like to email me with certain stats I can have my LTC guy run a quote and give it to you (Just need your state and # employees). Just so you have something you can compare it to v. just going with one quote from the Met guy.

Just a thought….

I’m with Scott in that the majority of the time, your group plan will be more costly than a group plan. Everyone is always shocked by this but it makes sense. The group plan may have open enrollment, where someone with severe arthritis can apply and will be virtually guaranteed to make claims. The healthy members of the group will pay for that person.

Contrast with individual plans, which have underwriting requirements, and a healthy couple will almost always be better off.

As a last aside, a lot of group plans scrimp on home health care. As your stats indicate, the majority of claims are for home health, so you want 100% coverage if you are considering a plan, be it group or individual.

Drew Nichols

The premiums that are charged for each group are unique to that group. But, when I’ve compared the group policies offered to large employers and associations, like AT&T, IBM, General Motors, the federal gov’t, and even AARP, (all of which are underwritten by the 3 largest long term care insurers), in many cases, usually about 90% of the time, married couples under the age of 65 can get better benefits for less premium if they buy a policy on their own, rather than go with the group policy.

I had a couple who had purchased a policy from me about 5 years ago and the following year they told me that they weren’t going to renew the policy because the husband had been offered a group policy at work and they assumed that it would give them better benefits and lower rates. Not only was the group policy 15% higher in cost, but the group policy had 35% lower home health benefits and a significantly lower lifetime maximum benefit.

And, the funny thing is that the group policy was offered by the EXACT same insurer from whom they had purchased their individual policy.

All I’m saying is that anyone who is considering a group long term care policy should compare it to an individual long term care policy (even an individual policy that is offered by the exact same insurer.) In my experience, 9 times out of 10, a married couple under the age of 65 can get better benefits for less premium by purchasing individual policies.

I’ve been specializing in LTCi since 1995. It’s always been this way.

Scott A. Olson, CLTC

Scott A. Olson, CLTC