Explaining Long Term Health Insurance

Health insurance covers all your medical problems that may occur today, but the basic plans do not cover what could happen to you in the long term. The older you get the more help you may need and there may come a point in time where you can no longer live by yourself. You either need in-home care or the services of a nursing home. In-home care is expensive and can cost around $15,000 a year. Nursing homes range from $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Those astronomical amounts of money mean you or your family is going to need to be insured by something.

Be Covered for the Long Term

Long term health insurance can help cover these costs but they are relatively new in today’s policies. Not many insurance companies offer long term health insurance, although it is growing. Long term health insurances can offer you daily allowances to pay for the cost of in home care or nursing homes. These costs can range but seem to average around $150. You can also have deductible periods instead of plain old deductibles. Deductible periods are periods of time in which you must pay the bill. If you have a twenty day deductible then the insurance company starts paying for the in home care or nursing home on the 21st day.

The Long Term Future?

Long term insurance is costly and will cause your premium to increase. However it is a good idea to look into due to the high costs of long term health care. It might be too much to expect social security checks to help pay for long term health care. Getting locked into a plan earlier in your life will allow your premium to be lower which will help you later in your life. Long term health insurance is becoming a more popular program today and soon more and more companies will be offering it.

No one ever wants to think about sending a family member to a nursing home or heading to one themselves, but at some point it will become inevitable. Nursing homes can provide top notch care to an elderly person, care that you normally would not be able to provide given your other responsibilities. They cost a lot of money, however. With the rising costs of a quality nursing home, you are going to need long term health insurance. It makes sense and can help you in the long run. Don’t ignore your future.

Additional Resources:

• Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program
• Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance