Long-Term Care
Start here: Medicare does not pay for custodial long-term care. Almost everything else about planning for care follows from that one fact, and most people do not know it until they need to.
The help most people eventually need — with bathing, dressing, eating, getting safely out of a chair — is custodial care, not medical care. Medicare pays for limited skilled care under narrow conditions and stops well before most people expect. Medicaid pays, but only after you have spent down nearly everything. Everything on these pages exists to fill the gap between those two.
Do not take our word for any of it. Medicare.gov sets out exactly what Medicare covers, and your State Health Insurance Assistance Program will tell you the same thing for free, with no interest in selling you anything.
The four products
Traditional Long-Term Care Insurance
A standalone policy paying a monthly maximum toward care, after an elimination period, up to a pool of benefit. You pay a premium for life, and if you never need care you get nothing back.
Worth a look if you are insurable, in your fifties or early sixties, and want the most benefit per dollar.
Hybrid (Asset-Based) Long-Term Care Insurance
A life insurance policy whose death benefit can be accelerated to pay for care, usually with a second pool that keeps paying after the death benefit is used up. If you never need care, your heirs get the death benefit.
Worth a look if use-it-or-lose-it is what has stopped you buying anything.
Annuity-Based Long-Term Care
An annuity whose value can be drawn on for qualified long-term care, often with easier underwriting than a standalone policy. Frequently confused with an annuity income doubler, which is a different thing entirely.
Worth a look if you have been declined elsewhere, or have an annuity doing no defined job.
Long-Term Care and Chronic Illness Riders
Riders that let a life insurance policy pay for care. Two of them look alike on a brochure and behave very differently at claim, and only one of them is long-term care insurance.
Worth reading before you compare two life policies where one advertises a care feature.
Three questions that decide it
Answer these and the product chooses itself. Almost every expensive mistake in this category is a mismatch between how long the need lasts and how long the policy lasts.
Can you accept getting nothing back?
If yes, traditional insurance buys the most care per dollar. If no, a hybrid policy returns a death benefit or your premium, and buys less care for the same money.
Is your health still good enough?
Health runs out before money does. Traditional and hybrid coverage are medically underwritten; annuity-based options usually ask less. Find out where you stand before deciding what you want.
Are you funding from income or from assets?
Traditional coverage is an ongoing premium from income, and that premium is not guaranteed. Hybrid and annuity-based options are normally funded from a lump sum you already hold.
Who we are appointed with
We are independent and appointed with the companies below for this product. Which of them we would approach for you depends on your age, your state, your health history and how the policy is to be funded — underwriting and design differ sharply between companies, which is the practical reason for working with someone who can approach more than one. Premiums depend on all of those, so they are quoted for you directly rather than published here.
For hybrid (asset-based) long-term care insurance
- Brighthouse Financial
- Global Atlantic (Forethought Life)
- Lincoln Financial Group
- Mutual of Omaha
- National Guardian Life
- Nationwide
- OneAmerica
- Securian Financial (Minnesota Life)
Appointments are listed against the product they were given for. Where a page on this site names no company, it is because no list has been supplied for that product yet — not because there is nothing to place. Ask, and we will tell you exactly who we would approach.
Not sure which of these applies to you?
Tell us how to reach you and roughly what you are trying to do. A licensed agent calls back, usually the same business day.