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The assumptions and comments are typical of most influencers who write about why long-term caregiving is a problem and how awful long-term care plans have become. The words to describe the issues are cliche.

These are my perspective as an extended care benefits advisor:

1. Caregiving and who will be responsible and the personal cost to families and friends is more urgent than it was 25 years ago. It hasn’t changed, and more people need care now and in the future.

b. Many insurance carriers who offered LTC benefits decided it wasn’t profitable to continue to provide LTC plans. Auto and other consumer companies have discounted items that the public doesn’t want to own or update to meet the consumer’s needs. LTC carriers have done the same. They have updated their benefits to meet the needs of the consumer.

c. The assumption that the affluent may self-fund is not a fact. The affluent pay lots of money to preserve their wealth. Owning a long-term care plan is more efficient than spending after-tax money to pay for caregiving.

Influencers are deciding for the affluent what they should do rather than spending pennies on the dollar or transferring assets not needed for retirement, philanthropy, or other endeavors may be more efficient to transfer capital into an LTC plan which will pay for caregiving without capital gains or income tax when caregiving is needed.

d. There is no requirement that families have to own long-term care benefits. Many people have no caregiving plan, with their insurance, estate plan, and other items needed long before caregiving is required.

The reason people would benefit from owning an LTC plan (it doesn’t have to be comprehensive) is that it has coverage that will pay for the expensive items of caregiving, whether at home or in a care center.

e. Life planning is not logical or efficient. Caregiving is human and is subject to personal perspective.

f. Owning an LTC plan allows for choices with where caregiving is offered, at home or in a care center, who will be responsible for your care, and how caregiving expenses will be paid.

g. My mother is 102. She has an income of over $1 million and assets in the 10s of millions. My mother is a retired estate planning lawyer and owns a long-term care plan. She owns an LTC plan because she was the primary caregiver to my father, who, in their 50 years of marriage, had accidents and health issues that required care for 6 months or more.

My mother owns insurance to transfer some of the risk to insurance companies. I asked her why she owns an LTC plan? Her response was, “no one has that much money to pay for care services and lifestyle expenses.”