The risk of long term care depleting your life’s savings is just as unacceptable as the risk of your house burning down. You insure over one risk; why not the other? It’s true that the insurance can be costly for good coverage, but not having it can be far costlier. Any amount helps. Long term care insurance can be purchased with a certain daily benefit amount, a benefit payout period, an initial elimination period (like a deductible), an inflation rider, and other terms. Even a low daily benefit can enable you to extend home care or assisted living, and a short benefit term can preserve resources if you have temporary nursing home stay exceeding Medicare’s 100 days. A proper Elder Law review will tell you what your exposure is, and how to incorporate insurance efficiently into your plan so you get the greatest return on your premium dollars.

Connecticut Elder Law Considerations

The key to good planning is knowing how much you need, how much you can afford, and how to structure the policy so that it dovetails with your level of assets and income to maximize the leverage it will provide you if the need for care arises. High-net-worth individuals might purchase a policy with a high daily benefit and a lifetime term. However, if you are a person of more average means, you can benefit from an analysis of your asset and income exposure to determine how to optimally allocate your premium dollars. Policies certified under the Connecticut Partnership for Long Term Care protect assets from Medicaid too, because the policy pays for your care and then enables you to exempt an equivalent amount of assets on any future Medicaid application.