This may indeed be my shortest column. It doesn’t take long to admit your powers of reasoning were simply headed in the wrong direction. Not just that you were looking at the problem from the wrong perspective or that your line of attack to solve the problem was flawed at the beginning. In truth, it has simply taken me over 20 years to “change.” Change is good, but we all resist it at our core. I still don’t Twitter but I may…yet. We like the familiar. The more something is like what we are already comfortable with, the better our mental health and the more likely we are to travel familiar highways.
I almost feel like Alice peering through the looking glass and discovering a topsy turvy world where all normal meanings are the opposite of what should be expected. I just spent the last 20 years constantly anticipating the consequences of inaction and poor planning that would not occur for 30 years out into the future. When I should have been focused on the immediate “point of care” financial and emotional catastrophe evolving in real time. How long has it taken us to learn that the only predisposition to install a layer of insurance protection takes place among those who are currently in the process of getting on their boots, or who recently experienced all the joys of caregiving in America and are still actively engaged in getting it off their boots. Just think of all the wasted sales energy squandered on illuminating the strong possibility that, in the not too distant future, you may indeed step in it.
How long has it taken us to learn it makes little difference which product genre you choose to address the risk. It is inertia, inaction and denial that matter. The adult children standing around the caregiving conflagration do not need to be sold anything. They are simply waiting for someone to help them make an informed decision as to how best to avoid a repeat experience for their children.
Again, for the last 20 years we have all been focused on how much insurance will be needed to replace the risk, when in my humble opinion the most important question is how little insurance is required to maintain control of your own claims destiny. We stood by, experiencing what we thought were circumstances beyond our control, as premiums rose, application length expanded, declines mushroomed and those carriers only interested in easy answers abandoned us as if somehow continuing to care about our customers was our personal weakness.
Even the dramatic rise of asset-based combo sales has been anecdotally attributed to the wealthy acquiescing in wiser asset repositioning equations and theoretically better informed financial decisions when, in fact, they really simply represent a dramatic reduction in the cost of the risk itself.
Perception has never been reality in the Wonderful World of Chronic Illness Risk Abrogation. It really is time to turn the Kaleidoscope 180 degrees and take a really hard look. The patterns our experience has established in that evolving collage of colors must be based in fact and focused on whatever we need to do to position ourselves to have the right conversation at the right time with the right people.
Which means it is also time to journey off the political correctness reservation momentarily for all the right reasons—the very day the adult children are gathered around the table to determine how they will help pay for the best available private care for a parent. It is that day that all options to leverage cost must be present including life settlements utilized for care. I am not going to embark on a debate as to where the life insurance industry achieves its profits: Investment. mortality or lapses. We should all know that the vast majority of all the life insurance policies ever sold never paid a death benefit. A number of states and the Innovation Committee of the NAIC have come to recognize these often abandoned or ignored assets can alleviate pressure on the cost of Medicaid as well as the pressure on so many to become wards of the state in the first place. Therefore I cannot personally imagine any “policy review” process conducted by an insurance professional that did not include the possibility of converting a dormant or no longer needed life insurance contract into an income stream specifically purposed for care!
Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.
