Ron Bliss: New, best way to get long-term care insurance

At Affordable Healthcare Pros, I have worked to be able to offer every kind of health insurance imaginable. Until now, however, I was lacking one item.

Because Long-Term Care insurance was so expensive and because there is no guarantee an individual will ever use it, I stopped short of getting qualified to sell it.

In July, however, I attended a training session and learned of a product that makes buying such coverage logical to buy. In the last month, I satisfied the requirements to sell life insurance with a Long-Term Care rider.

We all need life insurance. We all will die. And now you can buy life insurance with a Long-Term Care rider (chronic care or terminal insurance rider.)

The way it works is like this: You buy a $200,000 life insurance policy and if you become chronically ill and need either home care or care in a facility, you can take 2 percent per month off the top of you life insurance face value to help pay expenses.

An example: With a $200,000 a year policy, you can take as much as $4,000 per month to pay for needed care – before you die – or $48,000 a year.

To qualify, you must need assistance for the rest of your life in two of the following Activities of Daily Living: Bathing, Dressing, Using the Toilet, Eating, Transferring or dressing.

And if you think you won’t need long-term care, think again. Some 70 percent of individuals will need assistance for two or more Daily Living Activities in their lifetime.

The money can be used for: Home Healthcare, transportation/food delivery, remodeling/personal loans, groceries/prescriptions. Housekeeping/lawn care and Assisted Living/skilled nursing care.

If you are diagnosed as being terminally ill, you can receive up to 50 percent of the face value of your policy before you pass away.

You need to buy the insurance while you still qualify medically.

There is underwriting for both the life insurance part and LTC rider part. You could pass one without passing the other.

It is estimated that 60 percent of those over 65 can quality.

Long-term care is not tied to age, however. Many need long-term care when they are severely injured in an accident. Fewer than 10 percent have long-term care coverage and the number of those over 65 who are covered is trending downward.

The average stay in a nursing home is 2.3 years and average cost is $70,000 per year.

Everyone needs life insurance and if you want it with the protection of a LTC rider, contact me at Affordable Healthcare Pros, 2307 N. Carson Street, in Carson City or call me at 775-224-7169 or 775-883-3414.

Ron Bliss is a former long-time sports writer who has been doing health and life insurance since 2009. He is certified on both Covered California and the Nevada Health Link and can sell products on and off both exchanges. Affordable Healthcare Pros also offers a variety of dental plans to include dental-vision-hearing plans in both states, as well as a wide variety of Medicare supplements and other health supplemental products to include critical illness, disability, plans to cover in-home or nursing home costs, accidents and hospital indemnity policies. He can also give you the choice of a number of Life Insurance carriers, including those who offer Long-Term Care riders.