The Advantages of Long-Term Care Insurance For Couples

Long-term care insurance is a good financial protection vehicle for anyone who has enough assets to protect and can comfortably afford the premiums. It can help ensure that all of the time and effort you have spent on acquiring a sufficient retirement income is not lost due to the rising costs of long-term care. There are several specific advantages for couples purchasing long-term insurance. Consider this: most often, the healthier spouse acts as the primary caregiver. Without long-term care insurance, the healthy spouse often takes on the bulk of caregiving duties, simply to try to avoid paying the high costs associated with either in-home care or institutional care. Eventually, this can leave the caregiver almost as ill as his or her spouse. Long-term insurance helps provide the necessary funds so that the healthy spouse can make sure that quality care is provided for the ill spouse while not further endangering his or her own health. Will We Save Money? Couples can even save money on the purchase of long-term care insurance, as all major carriers will discount the cost of a policy by thirty to forty percent when both spouses are on the same policy. This can result in significant cost savings for married couples. The good news is that even those who may not be married but have lived with someone else with whom they are in a committed relationship for more than a year may also receive the same discount for long-term care insurance. What Should We Do If One of Us is Declined? If one spouse is approved for a policy but the other has significant health issues that preclude him or her from qualifying for long-term insurance, this does not mean that the couple should decline coverage for the healthy spouse. Long-term insurance is still an advantage for this couple because no one knows which spouse will need long-term care first. If there is a major reversal of health for the previously healthy spouse, the one who had health issues originally would be in an even more disadvantaged position as a caregiver. In this case, long-term care insurance would provide the funds needed for quality care without further damaging the health of the spouse who was declined for the long-term care insurance policy. It would not be reasonable to forgo health insurance for one spouse simply because the other cannot qualify for a major medical plan. The same is true for long-term care insurance. It may be disappointing that both cannot be covered, but the financial risks for each of them are still prevalent and should not be ignored.