ATLANTA: Policies are rising in price, while benefits are getting skimpier.
For aging baby boomers, planning for long-term care costs becomes more pressing every day. But the insurance that helps to cover these costs is surging in price, while the benefits are significantly decreasing.
As prices rise, health care experts are engaging in a fierce debate about whether the coverage is worth the years of premiums. Even when people do go into a skilled nursing home, those bills may not be as enormous as many people believe. Half of men and nearly 40 per cent of women who enter skilled nursing homes never have a stay exceeding three months, according to a recent study.
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3. Although many consumers have traditionally thought of long-term care policies as coverage for the catastrophic scenario of a years-long skilled nursing home stay, about half of new claims are for in-home care. The common perception that a person in long-term care progresses from her home to an assisted-living facility to a skilled nursing home is really not proving to be true in most cases…