The Intercompany Long Term Care Insurance Conference Association’s (ILTCI) vision is to create an environment for aging in America that includes thoughtful, informed planning that takes into account the most effective and efficient use of resources in addressing the risks and costs of long term care for all levels of American society. It is the desire of the ILTCI to recognize people and organizations that have made significant, long term contributions in attaining the ILTCI vision. This year the Association bestowed great friend and monthly Broker World commenter Ron Hagelman with their Recognition Award. To be eligible for this award, candidates must be engaged in the long term care field, such as a long term care service provider or financier, as a regulator or legislator involved in governance of long term care or these entities, or as a research or policy expert in long term care issues, and exhibit an extraordinary commitment to the industry through ingenuity, length of service and dedication. Following is Ron’s acceptance speech.
First, my most humble and heartfelt appreciation to the ILTCI. Thank You for this auspicious honor and prestigious peer recognition. I apologize for not being physically present where I know I have so many friends but, as I attempt every month in my column, I will try earnestly to make good use of the opportunity to momentarily hold your attention. I must begin by thanking my life partners. My wife Margaret who has had the courage and grace of putting up with me on a daily basis. No one in my humble opinion succeeds without the love and support of family and close friends. My business partner Barry Fisher has always been some amalgam of those roles. We have been tilting at windmills together for over 20 years. There is an ongoing cocktail conversation as to who represents Don Quixote and who is Sancho Panza. My response is “No Comment.”
I need to recognize my family legacy. My father, the creator of America’s first impaired risk life insurance company, Guardsman Life, in 1962, and my brother Curt, who served valiantly for over 20 years as CMO for Hannover Reinsurance, repeatedly helped me understand that insurance is always the best answer.
And this would all be moot without the freedom of speech provided by our industry’s premier independently owned magazine, Broker World. When the publisher, Steve Howard, discussed a possible LTCI column as I retired from State Life in 2004, I agreed if I owned my own words and an opinion column would not be subject to editing. Steve kept his word and I have not been able to walk away from that privilege.
This is now only the second meeting I have missed. I was here at the beginning. The first ILTCI cocktail party in Miami of a primarily actuarial persuasion and the pregnant conversation among each knot of participants expressing a furtive lament concerning our lack of claims experience. Careful what you wish for.
Ok, If you have ever suffered through one of my monthly rants you are painfully aware that I am a hopeless Pollyanna optimist. I know that mankind staggers forward over time. The good girls and guys always ultimately prevail.
Those valiant troops are in this room right now:
- The Veterans who never lost faith or left a client behind.
- The bright and shiny faces of each new crop of marketing and actuarial activists who continue to step forward to lend a hand.
- The company executives in this room and across this free country that know and admit publicly or privately that the sales opportunity of America’s largest unprotected risk does counterbalance the marketing and administration of the perceived risk.
- The folks in this room understand that yes, we all need to win—company, reinsurer, administrator, distributor, front line sales specialists and, please God, those American consumers most in need of our help!
- We have to be closer to an answer. The Long Term Care Conundrum fiercely fought for so many years must have yielded better direction. There has to be a better understanding of earlier planning, entrenched claims experience, consumer resistance and a balanced justice of thought as to where the responsibility of the cost of this risk must reside.
We may know more about what causes the problem and how to fix it than we are willing to admit.
- We know who should buy and why.
- We know that even a smaller amount of prevention balm can help dramatically.
- We know that the carriers, God Bless them, can do a much better job of working together loudly and publicly to help us emphasize just one concept—the risk is real!
- The game has moved home publicly and privately. Creativity and accommodation with this new reality are mandatory.
- We understand we got some past pricing assumptions wrong. It remains an innocent mistake. This must stop being an excuse for retreat but instead a fantastic opportunity to advance.
- Combo life policies are not a panacea. Claims will never be equal between the life and health risk.
- Experiments in Social Insurance will always require insurance support.
- And, finally, I must admonish all those who care. We may have struggled with sales. However, past experience with disability issues mandates that we must not struggle with the efficient and timely paying of claims.
As a proud long time member of the SOA Long Term Care Section Council and a frequent speaker at this Conference, and a lifetime believer in “The Cause,” I most humbly thank you. And I would like to confirm that your generous gift of a thousand dollars will go to the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation in Luling, TX, where we feed the poor, serving over 250 dinners mostly to seniors every Wednesday night for the last 8 years. Now wait for it…
“Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.“
