Tag: eligibility of benefits

What your state lets you keep, effective 1/1/2024

This is a table that shows the minimum assets and income each state allows nursing-home residents and their spouses to keep.

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The Partnership for Long-Term Care

The idea of the Long-Term Care Partnership is to provide a way for the Medicaid program to work together with private long-term care insurance to help those people who are caught in the middle: they can’t afford to pay the cost of the care or even the cost of a long-term care insurance policy with unlimited benefits, yet their assets are too high to qualify for Medicaid to pay their long-term care expenses. Many middle-income workers and retirees find themselves in this position.

Participating insurance companies in the Partnership recognize the needs of these middle-income Americans by providing LTC insurance policies that have built-in consumer protection benefit standards, and participating states cooperate by allowing these policyholders to access Medicaid without spending down their assets almost to poverty level if the insurance benefits run out.

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How much does long-term care insurance cost? (rate calculator for sample plan)

Buying long-term care insurance is like buying a car. You pay for the core components like an engine and four wheels with tires on them, then add the options that mean the most to you.

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How Do You Get a Claim Paid?

Over 99% of long-term care insurance policies sold today are tax-qualified,* which means the way to get a claim paid is the same as it is Federally controlled in order for the premiums to be tax-free according to IRS guidelines and enjoy other tax incentives. Just like you can need care physically or mentally, you can trigger the benefits in one of those two ways.

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Planning for Long-Term Care Inflation Isn’t Rocket Science, Folks

The new John Hancock Benefit Builder product has turned long-term care insurance into an investment instead of an insurance product.

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How the Supreme Court Decision Affects Long-Term Care Insurance

The Supreme Court decision on June 28, 2012 makes it even more critical for people to own long-term care insurance as it is highly questionable as to how many Medicaid dollars will be there for LTC in the future. In 20-30 years, people who need long-term care will be sharply divided between haves and have-nots. Many people who elected to self-insure will be squarely in the middle of the have-not bucket as the cost of care soars to $1000 a day in 30 years. Money buys choices. Without long-term care insurance, most families simply won’t have the money to buy care and their worst nightmare will happen as the burden for their care falls on their children and grandchildren.

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The Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Plan with 2011 Open Season Update

The largest employer-sponsored long-term care insurance program with eligibility estimated at 20 million people, was launched in March of 2002 with limited benefits, and expanded during Open Season (July 1 – December 31, 2002) with full benefits and abbreviated underwriting for active employees and spouses. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) selected John Hancock and …

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What is Long-Term Care?

There are many names for this event that can dramatically affect your relationships with others – your parents, children, siblings, and yes, it can and does affect marriages and committed relationships in many ways. Together we will explore the financial side of course, but not stop there. The most common name for this is long-term …

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State Budget Shortfalls and State-Specific Budget Cuts

Public-Private Long-Term Care Insurance Plans will have a tremendously positive impact on state budgets if we educate employers to offer it now to all employees to decrease cuts in other services like you see here.

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States Continue to Feel Recession’s Impact

By Elizabeth McNichol, Phil Oliff, and Nicholas Johnson

The worst recession since the 1930s has caused the steepest decline in state tax receipts on record. State tax collections, adjusted for inflation, are now 12 percent below pre-recession levels, while the need for state-funded services has not declined. As a result, even after making very deep spending cuts over the last two years, states continue to face large budget gaps.

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