Introduction:

When age, illness, terminal conditions, or injury effect the overall wellbeing of you or a loved one, long term care is an option for coping with such an unfortunate predicament. Long term care comes in all shapes and sizes. Skilled long term care is a physician ordered, set plan for a patient. It includes care in a variety of settings, supervision, physical therapy, and is far more of a medical process than its counterpart, personal care. Personal care doesn’t necessarily require the supervision of a medical professional. Certified nurse aides and home health aides practice personal care giving with activities of daily life. Long term care services are more of a means of making the patient comfortable with their health situation rather than attempting to correct it.

Long Term Care Insurance:

Long term care insurance covers virtually all types of services whether they are in the home, a medical facility, or assisted living/nursing homes. Each policy is custom tailored to the financial and health needs of the policy holder. With this in mind, long term care insurance agencies combine and interchange benefits and coverage in different ways. For example, a long term care policy could pay for a home health aide, but only from home health aide services that they approve of.

Long Term Care Insurance Cost:

Age, health, level of coverage, and benefits are the defining factors of long term care insurance cost. Long term care insurance cost is something that you are largely in control of. You decide on policy options like how long your maximum benefit period will be as well as other controllable options. However, while the decision is still yours to make, inflation protection is a requirement for most policy holders and can be as low as 25% or as high as 40% added onto the premium.

Types of Policies:

Policies for long term care insurance can be acquired on an individual, employer, or federal basis. But no matter where you are buying your policy from, all policies are either “tax qualified” or “non tax qualified”. A tax qualified policy has tax advantages over non tax qualified policies. With a tax qualified policy, the premiums you pay for long term care benefits are largely or completely tax deductible. Age is the largest factor in deciding how much you can deduct. For example, a forty year old could claim about $320 whereas a seventy year old could claim almost $4,000. If you acquired a policy prior to 1997 then chances are the policy is already tax qualified. However, if your policy was bought after 1997, then you should check with your agent to see if your policy is tax qualified. Post 1997 policies must carry certain provisions (i.e. guaranteed renewability) to be considered tax qualified.

Conclusion:

Long term care insurance policies are ideal for people with a steady income who wish to utilize their assets for other financial endeavors than funding long term care. The policies are tax qualified and allow for all or a portion of paid benefits to be deducted. It is a financially viable solution for the majority of middle income seniors and is best acquired prior to needing care.

Find all the information, including Consumer Information at www.ltcfp.com

Get the facts at http://www.ltcfp.com/

Author Bio: Find all the information, including Consumer Information at www.ltcfp.com

Category: Medicines and Remedies
Keywords: long term care insurance, long term care cost, long term care,