Long Term Care Statistics

Will You Need Long Term Care?
And should you buy long term care insurance?

Why are you even pondering such a thing as long term care statistics?  Let's start with a few key facts:

Fact: 75% of people older than 65 will eventually need long-term care services at some point.

Fact: About 80 million Americans will turn 50 over the next 18 years. That is 1 person every 8 seconds.

Fact: By 2020, due to the rapid retirement of baby-boomers, approximately 1 in 3 workers will provide some kind of long term care to their boomer parents.

The statistics are clear: the chance of needing long-term care is high - and so are the costs.  When you are shopping for long term care insurance, remember to insure your assets adequately, while avoiding overinsuring yourself.  Long term care insurance is, after all, essentially there to protect your nest egg. 

The long-term care insurance industry can seem to be fearmongering at times, providing shocking statistics.  Often, the idea is to get a large sale for the agent - a policy with lots of bells and whistles.  We believe that perhaps focusing on the core long term care coverage is a better idea.  Such an approach will save you money on your premiums for years to come.

More Long Term Care Insurance Stats

1. The national average cost of care for just 1 year in a nursing home is approximately $60,000. In major cities like Boston, New York City, etc. long term care can be as high as $70,000 to $100,000 annually.

2. The annual cost of lost productivity to companies from long term care responsibilities for their employees is $25 billion a year, or about $4000 per employee.
3. For every one person receiving long term care in a nursing home, there are 4 people receiving home health care.
4. About 75 percent of single people and 50 percent of all couples spend all their savings within one year of entering a nursing home.
5. 92% of all long term care insurance claims are for about 3 years.  4.5% will need long term care for more than 6 years.

At LTC Tree, we give you the long term care statistics you may not find elsewhere online and that other LTC insurance agents may not be sharing with you.  Our goal is to make shopping for long-term care insurance not only hassle free, but as pleasant as possible.  We encourage you to check out our quote request below to get your own personal side-by-side quotes for the top blue-chip companies in the business.