John Hancock Family Care II vs their Custom Care II Shared Policy

     We field a lot of calls on our 800 number from people across the country on various questions about long term care insurance policies.  A common one i get if the difference between John Hancock's Custom Care II shared policy and their Family Care II.  Both allow you to share benefits with your spouse but the Family Care II will allow you to include your kids on the policy.  With the Custom Care II plan you both get your own policy, but in the event you use all your benefits you can then dip into your spouse's policy.  With this plan (the most common) in the even you are both on claim at the same time you DO NOT have to share the monthly benefits like you would with John Hancock's Family Care II.  For example, For example, with Family Care II plan if you and your wife were at a nursing home and the bill was $9000 for the both of you the family plan will pay $4500.  The regular Custom Care II shared plan would pay $4500 each or $9000 total.

At LTCtree we are brokers and work with virtually all the companies and their various plans.  If you'd like an non-biased opinion and quotes from the top companies in the business take a few minutes to complete the simple secure form below and then we will mail you out your quotes. 

What is the best Long Term Care Insurance company for me?

     Retirement might be this year, next year, or in 20 years, but it's never too early or too late (although you got to be some-what healthy to qualify) to plan for long term care.  What we at LTCtree are seeing in the long term care (LTC) insurance market, is younger and younger people are buying the coverage now.  We sell policies in all 50 States and the median age for buying LTC insurance this year so far is 52 and last year it was 55.  When I began in the 90's the average age for buying LTC insurance was 67.  What's causing this dramatic trend?  The Baby-boomers are now taking care of their parents and do not what to be a burden on their kids.  This is the most common driving force for this increasing wave of people planning for LTC with this insurance.

     The age in which you buy long term care insurance is important in determining what company you should look at.  Genworth Financial is the former GE Financial and have more policy holders than any other company.  Married people around 40-55 tend to have better rates with Genworth in most States; John Hancock has great rates 50-70 and especially for single folks over their competition.  Allianz Life out of Minnesota, has competitive rates 45+, but especially for older people 70+ because they have 5 rates classes to put people in which means if a person does not have perfect health, Allianz might be able to insure the person because of their large underwriting rates classes.  Genworth has a very narrow underwriting rate class with just two and John Hancock has 4 rate classes. 

     MetLife and Prudential are hit or miss and I've seen them be competitive in about 15% of cases, but you must get quotes from them as well as the three mentioned above just to make sure there is not a better deal for you. 

     At LTCtree we work with all of these long term care insurance companies and more so take a few minutes and fill out the form below so you can begin taking control of your retirement by learning your options.  Long term care insurance is not for everyone, but it's just smart financial planning to at least check.

Today there was an article in The Herald in Everett, WA regarding Medicare and its limits that got me thinking.   Most people are ignorant of what exactly Medicare/Medicaid covers.  This is no surprise, for the rules change from time to time and most people think that the system covers them when they need it.

In the case covered in the paper today, they point out all of the fine nuances of medical care that make it just enough to make you want to pull out your hair.  In this case, the patient was not admitted to the hospital after a surgery, but instead was recommended for observation.  Medicare wouldn't pay for care while "under observation" and the Long Term Care Insurance policy that the lady had was set to begin paying after a 90-day elimination period, so the family was in a pickle. 

There are many reasons to have long term care insurance, and having a shorter elimination period is a nice luxury, but does of course push up premiums.  When you are trying to decide which policy you are interested in purchasing, you have to make priorities.  You can choose a lower waiting period, say 30 days, but your premiums will be pushed up fairly drastically.  On the flip side of the coin, when you DO need to use your policy, having that shorter elimination period will reward you greatly.  Imagine costs at $100/day (extremely conservative for most cases) and a 30 day elimination period saves you $6,000 over a 90-day elimination period.

The rule of thumb with Medicare right now is that something has got to change.  If not, the "social safety net" will be useless to most Americans with all of the fine print that makes coverage so hard to understand.