Consumer long term care insurance warning

Today's long term care insurance policies are being built to order. This means that many insurance companies have base contracts, and then you can add optional riders and provisions to custom tailor your contract. While rates are different between companies, it really makes it virtually impossible for you as a consumer to shop rates. Unless you spend a lot of time truly understanding every provision, rider and benefit built into a long term care insurance policy, you won't be able to compare prices apples to apples.

Your best bet is to work with a long term care insurance specialist. In our opinion, most financial planners are not very good at specific types of insurance. They cast a broad net, and simply don't have the time to find out which product is the best product for every product they implement. Think about it, is it realistic for a financial planner to know which insurance company has the best long term care insurance, disability, whole life, universal life, term life, annuity and mutual fund at all times? The answer more times than not is no. They tend to stick with the products that their primary insurance company sells. It is our recommendation if you are working with a financial planner, to take his/her advice to purchase long term care insurance. However, purchase the product through us or another LTC specialist.

There are some specific items we would like you to be very careful about. If your financial planner ever recommends a policy based on rate alone, you are most likely not getting the entire story. Rates with long term care insurance policies are not guaranteed, and many major insurance carriers have already had severe rate increases in the past. So, just because a policy is cheaper today, it does not mean it will be cheaper tomorrow. The bottom line is rates are not guaranteed to remain level with any insurance company; they are guaranteed renewable, but not guaranteed to remain level.

Before you buy any insurance policy, make absolutely certain that the insurance company has excellent financial ratings from A.M. Best.

While you cannot buy based on rates alone, some insurance companies have huge discounts for two or more people who live in the same household. So if a husband and wife, sisters or even two priests decide to buy long term care insurance at the same time there are very large discounts available to them.