Long Term Care

What is Long Term Care?  Long Term Care is an insurance policy that, when you can’t do 2 out of the 6 activities of daily living, the policy kicks in and will pay for a nurse to come into and individuals home, and administer care.  The 6 activities of daily living are:

Eating

Bathing

Dressing

Transferring (from a bed)

Toileting

Continence, which is the mental capacity to know when to use the bathroom.

Long Term Care is not only a valuable insurance policy to have, as a healthy person, but for someone that is facing Familial ALS, it would be a game changer.  Because this policy would help with the exurbanite amount of medical costs, related to in home care for a PALS.

 In a nut shell, Long Term Care, or LTC, is an insurance policy that you pay into, and build up a bank account, that you will be able to access, and then pay a nurse to come in and help with in home care.  Not only does this policy keep patients and families from going broke, but it allows the patient to receive care in the comfort of their own home.  Now, if you don’t have this policy, then the patient and/or the patient’s family will have to use their own resources and time to care for the patient.  Once those resources run out, the state usually takes over, and liquidates the patient’s assets and then puts the patient in a state run home.  Which would be a very unsavory situation for a PALS.  An LTC policy, would keep the PALS, from going into a state home, at least for 5 years, which is the longest payout period you can get in an LTC policy.  The structure of how an LTC policy operates, varies from carrier to carrier.  But they all have a waiting period, specified benefit amount, and a payout period.

Another one of the aspects of LTC policies, is that they are underwritten, meaning the carrier will look at you medically, and your medical history.  So you have to be relatively healthy when you apply.  So how does that apply to PALS??  It applies to people who have a history of familial ALS, and have not gotten tested for the gene.  Once the test happens, and the positive test result, of the gene for familial ALS, goes into your Medical Information Credit Report, it will be nearly impossible to get approved for an LTC policy.  So the window is small, but for those of you young people that have familial ALS in your blood line, and you haven’t had the test, you can get this policy, at a very, very inexpensive monthly premium.  For PALS that have already been diagnosed, unfortunately, it knocks you out of any possibility of getting this policy.  But there are other solutions, that I will be talking about, in future articles.

In general, I think that everyone should have an LTC policy, because 3 out of 4 people, will reach an age where we are alive but incapable of doing 2 or more of the activities of daily living.   We are living longer, and as we live longer, unfortunately, our bodies do break down to a point where we don’t function as well.  And we will need help, and an LTC policy will provide that help.

Please remember this article is for informational use only, and to help people understand their potential options, that await them, within the insurance world.

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