Understanding long term care insurance terminology is often the cause of great confusion and frustration for advisors as well as consumers.

Much of the benefits terminology was derived from the long term disability industry, where it also bewildered applicants. Today, many LTC policies use simpler and more understandable concepts, but assessing the terms carefully is still essential, because terms differ between contracts and they may involve tradeoffs from traditional comprehensive LTC insurance.

The American Academy of Actuaries told state regulators it will be developing long term care morbidity tables.

Members of the Accident and Health Working Group at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo., heard about the LTC insurance valuation morbidity tables project early this week during a working group teleconference.

Long-term care specialists—including consumer advocates, providers, public officials, and policy experts—who participated in a national survey generally agreed on the need for long-term care reform. Despite some differences, key constituent groups supported the establishment of government-sponsored financing strategies, a shift toward home- and community-based care, offering payment incentives to improve quality, and more effective regulation of nursing homes, home health care agencies, and assisted living facilities.

Broad health care reform legislation being considered by Congress would effect a major change in the way the United States finances long-term care. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act would create a voluntary national long-term care insurance program. As lawmakers debate the potentially far-reaching proposal, they may learn from the experiences of other developed nations and from recent experiments in the U.S.

A series of publications provide a history of the generations born since the early 1900s. The profiles provide a snapshot of four generations. They look at demographics and, perhaps more importantly, the events occurring during their teen and young adult years that influenced their values and their viewpoints.

Newsletter of the SOA's Long Term Care section.

Stock prices have reduced retirement funds by nearly 50 percent for the Baby Boomer Generation. With tens of millions approaching retirement, can long-term care provide a cost effective solution?

This edition looks at recent evidence concerning the frequency and burden of falls, the value of exercise programmes and the prediction of future falls.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 included some key provisions that addressed for the first time the taxation of combination annuity plans featuring long-term care insurance (LTCI). The rules apply only to nonqualified annuities coupled with tax-qualified long-term care riders.

The largest open long-term care insurance claim has surpassed $1.2 million in paid benefits, according to a just-released report from the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. The claimant, a woman, purchased coverage at age 43, paying an annual premium of $1,800. Three years later her claim began and has continued for almost 12 years. [Note: Payment of policy premiums ceases when an individual is receiving policy benefits.]

With the H1N1 flu spreading globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a pandemic. This marks the first global flu epidemic in 41 years with reports of the flu coming from Mexico, U.S., Australia and many more locations. In response to this development, members from the Society of Actuaries (SOA) are advising businesses to revisit and/or create business continuity and preparedness plans.

With the flowering of “financial services,” life insurers are now seriously questioning the appropriateness of cumbersome, time-consuming and blatantly customer-unfriendly screening tests.

Some 400,000 individuals purchased long-term care insurance protection in 2008 according to a just-released report. The overwhelming majority (84%) of individual buyers in 2008 were younger than age 65 and three-fourths (76%) selected a more affordable approach to this protection by opting for coverage for a specific number of years.

The annual study conducted by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, the industry's professional trade organization, analyzed data on 215,000 buyers of individual long-term care insurance protection.

Presentations made at the 5th Geneva Association Health & Aging Conference No: 348 November 2008.

Despite the experience of Penn Treaty Network America in Allentown, Pa., which was recently put into rehabilitation, experts say reinsurance is available for long term care carriers.

The 2009 Long-Term Care Insurance Sourcebook, a compendium of the most current relevant research and data regarding long-term care and insurance products, has been published by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (http://www.aaltci.org).

As 2008 came to an end, many of us found ourselves wondering what the adjective 'long-term' means in the context of wildly gyrating stock markets and the day-to-day uncertainty this turbulence has created for countries around the globe."

http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/showdctmdoc.jsp?country=global&url=Tillin...

John Hancock has announced the results of an in-depth study of the 2008 costs of long-term care (LTC), which found that LTC costs have been increasing in line with inflation in recent years.

Presentation from SOA Annual Meeting in Orlando, October 2008.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 includes some important tax rules affecting combination plans that feature life or annuity plans coupled with long-term care insurance (LTCI). Many of these rules will become effective Jan. 1, 2010. In some cases, the rules will be applicable to policies on the books prior to that time. Among the benefits resulting from these new rules, the most notable would seem to be the clarification of tax treatment of annuity/LTCI combination products.

Price rollbacks throughout the U.S. economy during the past year did not apply to long-term care service providers, according to the 2009 MetLife Market Survey of Nursing Home, Assisted Living, Adult Day Services, and Home Care Costs. Private room nursing home rates rose 3.3% to $219 per day or $79,935 per year, while assisted living also rose 3.3% on average to $3,131 per month. Home health care aides now cost an average of $21 per hour, a 5% increase; adult day services run $67 per day, a 4.7% increase.

...from the Long Term Care International Forum.

It is no secret that the long-term care insurance (LTCI) industry is having trouble offering products with a convincing and an attractive value proposition. In a recently released report, Conning Research & Consulting, Inc. reminds us that from an economics point of view, in order for a consumer to purchase a product, the product must 1) satisfy a perceived need or a want for which the consumer is personally responsible and 2) have an acceptable price. It appears that there are large gaps between LTCI consumers and insurers in both of these areas. (link updated)