Making the point is of course the mission of this column. I’m sure some would suggest I’ve simply kept attempting to make the same point over and over without sympathy, empathy or remorse for my similarly unrepentant long term care friends that read this column. Therefore one more time:
- The point remains we are facing a worldwide financial crisis of our own making. I take small doses of my blood pressure medications every eight hours because it’s a “maintenance” program—one among many that extends and maintains the longevity of individuals in each and every industrialized nation on this planet. None of us was in any way prepared for an aging population with numerically insufficient working adults to support the cost (or an adequate supply of caregivers) to provide the basic required services.
- The inescapable point is that the need for custodial care is a virtual certainty. That cost exposure is of course best illuminated by our failure to place sufficient insurance. We have no expectation that we can rest on our sales laurels. More and more we must turn our attention to what we did not get done. What happens to the 90-plus percentage that refused to take action or the 50-plus percentage that tried and were declined for coverage.
- The frustrating point is that according to recent consumer research conducted by Nationwide, three fourths of Americans know that health care costs are likely to derail their retirement plans. Not surprisingly, the same three fourths also know they will not have money to pay for unplanned medical expenses or long term care.
- The maddening point is that in the same survey two thirds of those surveyed “knew” that long term care expenses would use up their retirement dollars and the same two thirds said they would rather die than go to a nursing home.
- The inevitable financial point is that most care is informal, taking place in the home, and the personal hard dollar cost to those mostly female caregivers is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- The most important point is that 70 percent of those who receive care were able to “choose” care at home or the assisted living facility of their choice. This may be the most important point: How much additional leveraged risk insurance is needed to supplement income to facilitate that freedom of choice?
- There have always been two points of claim engagement. Two strategically different approaches to attempting to resolve an impending inevitability: 1) Measure the size of the potential financial problem and recommend the purchase of insurance to replace an “average” care claim event—for those with sufficient financial ability this remains the only intelligent response to the problem; or, at least in my mind a much more important level of engagement, 2) help establish a “supplemental” side fund designed specifically to add to existing assets and income to maintain a personal psychological threshold of assurance that your client will remain a private-pay care recipient.
- The point we must take to heart is that most claims are of a fairly short duration and that insurance dollars will always be added to the existing dynamics of all financial resources. We must also recognize that most claims therefore only require a modest addition of supplemental support.
- The only really important point is the “Point Of Care.” The goal that matters is freedom of choice and personal control of the how, where, and by whom of a need for custodial care.
- This is the market that matters. This is the line in the sand where we must stop and defend our choice of profession. The “Point Of Care” is our new frontier of product innovation, supplemental protection strategies, technology deliverables and risk leveraging strategies. It cannot ever be too late. I would challenge all to dig in here, at the edge of defeat, and do all you can to try to be helpful to those who chose not to prepare or whose health had already begun to turn inevitable corners. I would humbly submit that being a solutions champion to those precariously perched above an impending need for care will place you in the right time and the right place to have the right conversation with the adult children. This may be the only way we break the cycle.
Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.
