Long Term Care and Disability Insurance

The Aging of the Baby Boomer Generation has an…

Presented by Leonard Berthelsen It was only a matter of time before the effect of the aging of Baby Boomers hit the Federal & State budgets. With less than 10% of this class of folks owning long-term care insurance, it has become necessary for the Federal Medicare and Medicaid system to review their budgets but also review what they are approving for payment. The big challenge that the federal government faced when trying to find ways to rein in some of these costs was that they were being looked at as being a heartless bureaucratic entity. By putting some of the burden back on the consumer for payment of services, they are scrutinizing those services and in many cases simply saying no to services altogether. That hasn’t set well with this generation of folks. The government was accused of developing “death panels”, as they were called, to try to rein in some of these expenses by considering the likelihood of patients’ recovery and ongoing quality of life. Medicare & Medicaid are jointly spending trillions of dollars every year and there is no light at the end of this tunnel. As a class of people, we are living longer, yet dying slower with health issues that are expensive to treat. It would be great if our government would pay whatever was needed to provide medical services for anything and everything that could medically go wrong. However, we know that is not practical or sustainable. Yet we still want the best care, by the best trained medical staff and at the lowest cost. Somewhere, something had to give. The Medicare and Medicaid system are in fact taking a hard look at rehab invoices and home health care bills. If the facility or provider is not following the letter of the rule, then Medicare and Medicaid will choose not to pay for the services. It then becomes the responsibility of the patient to pay out of pocket for this care. This could be several hundred dollars to several thousand. Medicare is allowing hospitals to admit recipients for non-emergency admissions under the term “observation” instead of full admission, thus putting more of a financial burden on the patient. What can you do to help your clients? Certainly, long-term care insurance will help tremendously with the outpatient side of the medical expenses. Also such plans as Recovery Care, Hospital Confinement & Home Care coverage will fill in the voids that we are seeing being created by both Medicare and Medicaid as they struggle to make their budgets work. Having the patient be more in-tune with what is actually being charged for those services certainly makes the government feel like they are being better stewards of our tax dollars than what we have seen from them in the past.
Long Term Care and Disability Insurance

Not responsible for your parent’s debts? Filial responsibility laws…

Presented by Leonard Berthelsen Many times we have a notion that we know how something should turn out, only to find out that the complete opposite is true. Filial responsibility laws are in place in 30 states in our country today. What is the Filial responsibility law? It basically makes an adult child responsible for the care debts of an ailing parent who cannot afford to pay for their care. We all thought that was what Medicaid was for, right? It is no longer enough for a person to have limited assets in order to qualify for Medicaid but apparently their adult children as well. Take a look at a Pennsylvania case that involved an ailing parent whose son was sued by the nursing home even before Medicaid had made a decision on the applicant’s eligibility. The courts ruled that by the mere fact of having a Filial responsibility law in place, the nursing home didn’t need to wait for a decision from Medicaid and could choose any or all of the adult children to be the responsible party for their parent’s bill. This potential liability should move more of our clients to reconsider long-term care insurance. We have talked as an industry for years that it makes good sense for adult children to have that conversation with their parents about their wishes and finances concerning long-term care issues. I think the urgency is a little stronger now in light of what we are starting to see happen. Long-term care insurance is still the best protection for a parent wanting to maintain choices and flexibility. It now has become even more important for the adult children to have that conversation with their parents and even consider paying the premiums for their parent’s policy. It could save them a tremendous amount of money in the long run.