Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Long Term Care Insurance
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Old 07-30-2012, 12:08 PM
NJblue NJblue is offline
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Originally Posted by buzzy View Post
LTC insurance can protect you from going through your life savings if one or both partners needs that kind of care. We don't know if some unforeseen event will put us in that position. My wife and I took out LTC policies when we retired, at 62 and 64. It was too expensive (and probably unnecessary for us) to buy full unlimited coverage, so we got a 3 year period and a 90 day elimination period, but 5% inflation protection. This is a hedge against financial ruin, but we may never need it, so we picked an affordable level of coverage.

We chose John Hancock for their financial stability. The only disappointment so far is that within three years they petitioned Florida and were approved for a 40% premium increase. We were offered a reduction in inflation protection to hold the premium, but decided to pay the increase and keep our original coverage. We'll have to revisit this decision if this happens again, as I expect it will in the future.

I would rather have modest coverage than go without insurance and hope for the best.
This is the main reason why we chose to not get one. If an LTC insurer is allowed to raise their rates in the future ... especially to such an extreme, to me this is no insurance at all. To me, the whole idea of insurance is the peace of mind that it is there if you need it. It does not give me peace of mind that it will be there for me if I need it since they can raise the rates to an unaffordable level. If they do this, I will have thrown away all that money over the decades.