{"id":1026835,"date":"2026-06-14T21:38:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T21:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1026835\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T21:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T21:38:22","slug":"a-new-option-for-long-term-care-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1026835\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Option for Long-Term Care Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Previous efforts to establish public long-term care protections have foundered. In 2010, the Affordable Care Act included <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/29\/details-on-the-class-act\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the CLASS Act<\/a>, a legacy of Senator Edward M. Kennedy that would have created a voluntary long-term care insurance program. The Obama administration eventually deemed it unworkable, and \u201cit never saw the light of day,\u201d Dr. Frank said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">The private market has also contracted. Most of the largest companies selling long-term care insurance \u2014 Genworth, John Hancock, MetLife \u2014 have exited the market. The return on their investments plummeted when interest rates fell after the Great Recession, and the number of insured people who abandoned their policies \u2014 a profitable development for insurers \u2014 was far below projections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">\u201cThe psychology of the industry was: Holy smokes, we\u2019re losing money! We\u2019re getting out,\u201d said Claude Thau, who directs the annual Milliman Long-Term Care Insurance Survey. As premiums spiked to cover the losses, consumers such as Ms. Haggett stopped buying policies. Moreover, Mr. Thau estimated, one in six applicants is unable to get coverage for health reasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Thus, fewer than 35,000 Americans bought stand-alone policies in 2024, compared with about 235,000 in 2010, according to a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.limra.com\/en\/newsroom\/industry-trends\/2025\/is-life-insurance-the-answer-to-the-growing-long-term-care-need-in-the-u.s\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">report from LIMRA<\/a>, a trade association. The average 60-year-old purchaser would, at age 80, receive a projected maximum benefit of $369 a day, Milliman reported. But the average annual premium on new stand-alone policies in 2024 \u2014 $3,265 \u2014 can seem daunting to someone close to retirement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">As the purchase of stand-alone policies has dropped, insurance companies have turned to policies bundling some long-term care benefits with life insurance or annuities. Those sales figures are climbing. Still, the association notes, only 3 percent of Americans over age 50 have any long-term care insurance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Previous efforts to establish public long-term care protections have foundered. In 2010, the Affordable Care Act included the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1026836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4316],"tags":[51334,105,4348,283606,272778,16,15,141094],"class_list":["post-1026835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-elderly","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-long-term-care-insurance","tag-states-us","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-washington-state"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116750628260345015","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}