Long Term Care Insurance Isn’t Dead
From: Wall Street Journal
Last year, after finishing with college tuition for their three children, Jessica Galligan Goldsmith and her husband, James, treated themselves to something she had long wanted: long-term-care insurance.
It hasn’t been cheap. The couple, both lawyers in their mid-50s, will shell out more than $320,000 between them over a decade. For that, they will be able to tap into benefits topping $1 million apiece by the time they are in their 80s, the age when many Americans suffer from dementia or other illnesses that require full-time care.
Plus, the policies pay out death benefits if long-term care isn’t ultimately needed, and most provide 10% to 20% of the original death benefit even if the long-term-care proceeds are fully tapped.
Such policies that combine long-term-care coverage with a potential life-insurance benefit are called “hybrids,” and they are reshaping the long-term-care niche of the U.S. insurance industry just as it had appeared headed for obsolescence, financial advisers say. The Goldsmiths were among 260,000 purchasers last year nationwide of these hybrids, according to industry-funded research firm Limra, far outpacing the 66,000 traditional long-term-care policies sold in 2017.
