The Benefits of Long-Term Care Insurance

Raymond Lavine is a principal at Lavine LTC Benefits, specializing in long-term care insurance benefits for individuals, families, and businesses.

He has appeared on television, featuring on Moving America Forward. He has also been a guest on numerous podcasts, discussing topics related to long-term care insurance and other financial matters.

Raymond achieved Amazon Best-Seller Status "Empathy and Understanding In Business" alongside acclaimed author Chris Voss.

https://www.seniorcareauthority.com/resources/boomers-today/

Learn when you may need caregiving services and how much caregiving will cost
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You are listening to Boomers Today with your host Frank Sampson.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, welcome to Boomers Today. I'm your host, Frank Samson.
Of course, each week we bring you important and very
useful information on issues facing baby boomers, their parents and
other loved ones. And as I do on every one
of our shows, I thank all of you, and I
thank all of you because our listeners are growing each

(00:37):
and every day because of all of you. So many
of you share our shows with friends and family. Many
of you listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Iheartrado, Audible,
or you just ask alexor Siah to take you to
Boomers Today, and of course you can always go to
our website at Boomerstodayradio dot com. So again, thank you all,

(01:00):
and I do know why our listeners are growing. I
do know why you're sharing so many of our podcasts
with friends and family is because we have wonderful guests,
very knowledgeable in their respective fields. And I'm not going
to disappoint you today because we have with this Raymond Levine,
who is the principal of Levine Ltc Benefits specializing in

(01:24):
long term care insurance benefits for individuals, families, and businesses.
He has appeared on television featuring on Moving America Forward.
He also has been a guest on numerous podcasts discussing
topics related to long term care insurance and other financial matters.

(01:44):
Raymond achieved Amazon bestseller status Empathy and Understanding in Business
alongside acclaimed author Chris Voss. So, Raymond, thank you so
much for joining us on Boomers today.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Really it well, thank you for having me as a guest.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, no, great, great to have you, so you know
so much, you know. You and I chatted a little
bit before the show and I said that over the
course of me doing this, which I've been doing podcasts
and radio shows for boy, you know, almost fifteen years now,

(02:24):
I've interviewed various specialists in long term care. I'm a
big believer in long term care insurance. But there's so
many changes that have gone on through the years. So
we want to make sure our listeners are up to
date with the latest and greatest. But maybe you can
just give us, you know, a real quick overview and

(02:46):
exactly what is long term care insurance and what types
of care generally does it cover?

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Well, long term care benefits, but as defined right and
you know, with all long term care specialists or agents
or however we know we want to entitle ourselves. We
all sort of talk on in the same template this
and the template is long term care insurance is insurance,
but it's a specialized kind of insurance that pays for

(03:16):
care giving, not health, not your health, not surgery, not hospitals.
It's something has happened in your life, frailty, an accident, illness,
or some sort of you know, cognitive disease. People usually

(03:36):
define it as Alzheimer's, but cognitive disease can have many categories.
And what long term care benefits does. It pays for
what has happened to you as an illness or frailty
or cognitive that you need care giving, and it will
pay for care in your home where most people want

(03:59):
to be, or in a care center or cognitive cognitive
care center. Now, originally it was people uh often think
of it as nursing home insurance. It can be, but
in most cases it's caregiving insurance. Now, the transition of

(04:19):
long term care benefits, it's got it's like it's been
like the real estate market or the equities market or banking.
You know, it has its highs and lows and in
the early UH UH, in the in the nineties and
early UH to mid twenty first century, a lot of
policies were sold and then things UH and and then

(04:44):
and then it had a big transition to you know,
other to other type types of policies. But the most
important thing is, you know, when people say, you know,
think about caregiving, nobody wants to think about caregiving. Nobody
wants to think about, you know, being older. If you do,
you know, let's say age of as a number, and
they'll give all give all those other excuses, but caregiving.

(05:08):
And I'll say this before you know, at the end,
caregiving or caregiving is not a hope and it's not
a strategy. You know, you if if you want. It's
the same as retirement planning. If you talk, if you
have a wealth advisor or a UH financial planner. It

(05:28):
takes years, you know to build up your your your wealth.
And the one thing you don't want to do is
use that wealth to pay for caregiving. If you don't
have to, it's much better to trans transfer to UH
insurance company. The other thing I've sort of evolved in
is think of ourselves as a warranty. You know, eventually,
you know, we're going to wear out. It's just inevitable. Now,

(05:51):
the final wearing out, of course, is dying. But in between,
you know, good health or cognitive or frailty or illness. Uh,
that's where the warranty light starts to blink. And so
what what does Raymond le Blind do? What does any
long term care person do? Is that I'm the money guy.

(06:13):
All the other things that people talk about, you know,
caregiving and things that they're doing, I'm the money guy.
I will help you provide the money so that you
can pay for these services, whether again, whether at home
or in a care center. And if you're like most
people and you want to be at home, then you know,
there's a planning process. You've got to plan for it.

(06:36):
It's it's uh, you can't hope for it. Uh, you
got to You've got to have a strategy. You've got
to have a plan. And that's where I help work
with people. And you know there's also something else too,
I mean, I'll bring it. People are suspicious or don't
like to talk to salespeople, especially you know, especially insurance
salespeople because they feel that, you know, we're going to

(06:56):
be manipulative or we're going to put them in a
position where they to try to make a decision they
may or not may not want. Let me also give
another thing that I think people are concerned about. Is
that what I do or what I'm offering, Just like
retirement planning, it's not immediate gratification, you got uh uh.

(07:17):
The sooner you you have a plan or you start
to stack the plans, the better you are because of
your health, because of premiums and the other thing that
you know, I asked because I use empathy in my
uh you know, call a sales approach or how is
I want to understand who I'm talking to. I want

(07:37):
to understand the family or the individual or you know,
if I'm dealing with a company. Is that people understand,
not that you know, you can call it education, but
I want to people understand that if you need caregiving,
there's there's a ka ching, there's there's a dollar amount
to this. Now what what what did I mean by that?

(07:59):
What I mean by it is, you know, it can
be you know, it's a financial issue, and it could
be a personal financial issue of somebody, you know, the
spouse of the partner or friend may have to give
up their career for a while, and that's expensive. I
mean there's a cost to that. Or you have a
plan and so that it will help pay. Just like disability,

(08:21):
if you have an illness or accident, disability will replace
all or most of your income.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
You know, me let me just you know, as you know,
I've been in the senior care industry for a while.
If you have, and I think that there maybe you know,
you could you know, clear up some things. But there's
this perception that people think that the government is going

(08:52):
to pay for their long term care. There's this perception
all right until they get educated, till they get confronted
with this, Well, it doesn't Medicare pay for this. Well,
no Medicare is you know more kind of healthcare insurance
for the elderly. Well doesn't medicaid you know, pay for this. Well,
you'd have to qualify for that and it might only

(09:13):
cover you going into skilled nursing, which you're a nursing
home that a lot of people try to stay out of.
Because the long term care generally speaking very state by state,
but generally speaking is private pay right, and the cost

(09:33):
of that you probably know statistics off the top of
your head. If somebody does need help with their activities
of daily living. You know, all the things you do
when you get up and then when you get up
in the morning, you get out of bed, you have
to go to the bathroom, you got to walk there.

(09:54):
You know, all the things feeding make yourself practice, all
the things that you maybe and do on your own.
That in a sense, generally speaking, what long term care
insurance would pay for, right, And generally speaking, am I correct.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
On that that that that's right. The other thing that
I think we need to know, especially in twenty twenty five,
is that you don't want to be poor or don't
have assets in America. You just you just don't. And
the things that you're bringing up, you know, Medica social Security,

(10:38):
you know, is a new deal nineteen thirties program. But
then after you get after World War two, the then
it became more you know, eventually had Medicare and Medicaid.
But the reason that it was worthwhile for you know,
the workforce is also transition too, and I you know,

(11:01):
I talked about you know, the transition of long term care,
but the workforce and how people are working has changed.
After World War Two, taxes were still very high. So
how did companies uh uh uh help employees? They have
all kinds of benefits. Why the reason is is because

(11:22):
it was tax deductible and so that so rather than
pay people sometimes more money which was had a high
tax rate, you gave them a lot of benefits. Now
it's switched where your tax base is rate is low.
But all but but you a lot of uh benefits
to find a contribution to uh uh Defined benefit retirement

(11:43):
plans mostly gone away and they're more you know, voluntary,
with maybe the companies contributing something. So the responsibility has
really become the individual employee or self employed. It's all
become upon us and so the individuals having to make
more more decisions and making these kinds of decisions is difficult.

(12:07):
I mean, you can look it up on the internet
and there are things you can find, or you talk
to Raymond Lewane, you talk to Frank Sampson, you talk
to other colleagues, and the usual question is what do
I do? How do I make a decision? You know,
and what's what's a good one? And you know, I
think there's also in the back we don't want to
make a mistake. Yeah, you know, we don't want to

(12:28):
feel you know, foolish, all right.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
So you know, let's compare life insurance and long term
care to totally kind of different things. But a why
do people get life insurance? They get life insurance because
my father actually was a life insurance sales person, all right,

(12:51):
so I learned a lot from him on that. But
they get it, you know, to really kind of take
care of their family should something happen to them. Generally speaking,
that would be probably some of the you know, one
of the top top reasons long term care. I look
at it as somewhat similar, all right, because if you

(13:15):
don't have it, A lot of people are in total
sticker shock when they find out how much long term
care is, all right, that you're going to need. And
if you don't have those types of funds, then it
does fall on the family. Again, it's going to fall
in the family to or you know, or you're not

(13:38):
going to get the type of care you should receive.
So give us an idea, and I know we're basing
it on today's dollars, what type of costs generally speaking,
ranges do people incur when they need long you know,
if they have to go into assisted living, or if

(14:00):
they have cognitive issues and they have to go to
a memory care, or if they have to have a
regular professional caregiver at home on a regular basis. What's
kind of the range of costs that people could expect.
I know it varies from state to state and city
to city, but give us an idea.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Well, I'll answered that in a broader ways. It is.
It's a very good question. I have a cost of
care Mutual of Omaha. There are a number of companies
that have cost of care, and so when I'm doing
a consultation, depending on what people want to know or
what information you know, we'll go through that to say, look,
if you're in the state of Washington, in the state

(14:42):
of California, wherever state, I have that, you know, for
any state. Although I'm not licensed in every state, I
can give people that it was. Let me give you
an example. Suppose you know you're you're in California, but
you might say, you know, look, I mean not remain
in California. I might move to New Mexico, Arizona, or
Idaho or South Dakota. So what I might do is

(15:04):
I'll say, well, look, let if you if you know
that that's where you may have whatever you may call
your retirement years.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Peter Peter Drucker, who I took a couple of courses
when I was at Claremont Graduate University, would say, you know,
you're people don't don't retire as much as they used to.
They sort of repot. And that's what Peter Drucker said.
But the point is, you know, we'll look at the
state that you live in. And the interesting thing is
people will say, well, it's expensive in California. Can't be

(15:33):
as expensive an Idaho or so it can be, you know,
depending on you know, if you're in a rural area
and you know what what what resources are available to you.
So I have that I also have and I'll be
happy to send it to you that if your listeners said,
it's it's a it's a questionnaire that you can fill
out to give you an idea of your life expectancy.

(15:56):
And then it will also show you, uh, you know,
what the cost of care would be, you know, whether
you're at home or in a care center. It will
it will, it will, it will show you that and
sometimes that's helpful to people before they have a consultation.
It gives them sort of an idea of what uh
the present and future costs of caregiving. And I'll also

(16:19):
just tell a personal story. My mother and my my
parents were not insurance buyers. They just weren't. I mean,
but they were. But they bought you know, the basic stuff,
which is what most people do. They buy homeowners insurance,
and they buy the car insurance, and maybe they get
some life insurance and they may have you know, umbrella policy,
so they'll have they'll have all that. But usually long

(16:41):
you know, caregiving is usually never part of the equation. Uh,
you know, it just isn't often often talked about. And
I would like to see you know, more advisors uh
uh advocate for it, whether they do it themselves or
to refer to people might like me or uh or others.
But to simplify the story, my mother my parents were

(17:04):
not insurance fiers. But my father, for three times in
his career and he was a lawyer and eventually became
a judge, had three very long term caregiving issues. And
my parents were partners, and I mean both professionally in life.
They met in law school. But the point is that
she had to suspend her state planning career several times

(17:30):
to help my father, and the last time they did,
they both got tried to get long term paraters. My
mother got it. My father couldn't because he had pre
existing conditioning. It's actually was his warranty was expiring, so
it took him two and a half years. But that
was the final illness. But my mother lived to be
one hundred and three. And again I go back. She

(17:51):
was not an insurance by but she said, look, you know,
maybe this long term care benefits would be worthwhile. But
there's an added subplot to this, and this is also
people got to follow the plot of you know what
this caregiving and why you need to have a plan,
whether it's an insurance plan or you want to sell

(18:11):
fun of it or you were talking about life insurance.
And remind me, I'll get to that is that she
lived one hundred and three, but she used that plan
for twenty years. Subplot to that, my mother was very affluent.
Now I'm not talking about five million, I'm not talking
about twenty million. I mean I'm talking about very affluent.

(18:31):
And I asked my mother, a state planning attorney, not
an insurance part, why'd you buy it? And she said,
nobody has that much money to pay for your lifestyle
and your and your caregiving. You know, I'll give you
an arithmetic thing for you, you and your listener. Is
it towards the end of my mother's life, at the
last four or five years, she had two or three

(18:53):
shifts in her condo twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week, three hundred and sixty five days in
West Los Angeles. And if you figure, probably it's fifty
sixty dollars an hour. Do the arithmetic.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, right, So let's do this. We've got to take
a quick break, all right, just to recognize our sponsor.
And when we get back, Raymond will talk about there's
different types of plans out there for long term care
that have changed, kind of more hybrid policies, and we'll
talk more about that. Okay, So a question I have

(19:33):
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(19:53):
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(20:16):
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the senior care authority advisor in your area. So we

(20:38):
are back now with Raymond Levine, who's the principal of
Levine LTC Benefits. So, Raymond, there's you know a lot
of different types of policies. It used to be that,
you know, if you wanted life insurance, you bought life insurance.
If you want long term care, about long term care?

(21:01):
You know. Maybe before we even get to that, you know,
I want to make sure we leave enough time for
you to share with people how they can learn more
about your organization, your website, anything you'd like to share,
and then we'll talk about the different types of policies.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Well, you can find me at www dot l A
v I N E L T C I N s
dot com. That's my website, which I'm constantly trying to
improve to make it more you know, videos and that
you can find, you know, cost of care, a lot

(21:40):
of things that you probably want to know before we schedule.
If you schedule a consultation with me. You can also
find me on social media. You can just type in
Raymond Levine in Washington State or just Raymond Levine and
I'll probably come up somewhere in the in the in
the search sites.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Great, great, great, So tell us you know, we don't
have a whole lot of time left, but I want
to make sure we talk about types of policies that
are out There's what's the most popular types of policies
out there. As it relates to long term care insurance.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Well, twenty five years ago, it was really traditional kind
of insurance. People would call it an expense based traditional. Since,
you know, as we go forward in the twenty first
century and after the meltdown, the financial meltdown which also
me melt down, melted down the traditional plans. You have

(22:41):
actually a really good range of plans now. One of
the things that also for people to be aware is
that not all plans are available in every state California
and sometimes in Washington, and they don't have as many

(23:02):
robust plans as in Nevada or Arizona, New Mexico. And
so you have so you know, you could you can
only buy what's available, you know, what the insurance commissioner
allows in the state. But it's all But there's been
an expansion because there's a true freedom plan where if

(23:23):
if you have no health but but you're not but
you don't initially need caregiving, it's ninety five dollars a month.
It's only home care does most of the things that
are long term care plans. So you've got you've got
that and whatever age you buy it, it's the same.
It's it's it's the same fee short term care plans.

(23:44):
If it's approved in your state. It can be a
wonderful benefit, I mean really a wonderful benefit, and the
premiums are I think are reasonable, and the health assessment
isn't astringent, and then you can go to the traditional
but the hybrid plan. There's another thing about hybrid plans,
because it took me a long time to understand how

(24:04):
how it works. And I don't think I'm you know,
you know that I have you know, a low IQ,
but it just took me a while to understand. But
I've really come to like hybrid plans and they're a
whole variety of them. And the thing is that they
were more a lot more expensive than traditional but they've
gone down in in in premium why interest rates, so

(24:28):
they so they're not as expensive as as you think
they are. The other thing is that their plans. Now,
I say, Frank, you say, look, I may want to
live in the Cayman Islands or her Bermuda or Spain
or Hungary or something that there there's a plan where
you can own it and it will pay full benefits

(24:49):
no matter where you live. So there are there are
all kinds of plans to fit you know, what people
their needs based on health assessment, their age, where they
want and and where they where they where they want
to live. So there's.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
So what you were saying is ninety five bucks a month.
I mean, I've never even heard of that. Is that
something that's new.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
I spent around oh i'd say fifteen years. Oh yeah,
and a company spaseed out of Florida and uh. And
the nice part about it is it's available in every state.
Because this is a subscription plan. It's like having trip
A or Costco but you and you and you can

(25:36):
you can stack it on your if you have a
regular long term care plan. There are no forms to
fill out, there's no health assessment. It's just a subscription
plan to pay for care in your home. It's only
for your home. It won't pay for care center and
will either do reimbursable.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So it's just it's paying for home. It's not paying
for going into assistant thing or.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Mental care anything. So so you know, I mean, for example,
I own a long term care point, but I also
have have it as a stack because uh, I wanted
I wanted to plan to pay for for the waiting period,
the elimination period before my main plan goes goes into effects.
So I stacked it so I had something to pay.
I had a plan to pay for care before my

(26:21):
main plan goes into effect.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Gotcha, But what would you say are the most popular
policies that are sold today? Are they? Are they still
the hybrids? And maybe you could explain that because we
only have a couple of minutes left, and maybe you
could explain exactly what a hybrid is if if that
is still popular.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
It isn't getting more popular, especially for businesses. UH, More
and more companies are offering hybrid plans. And it's ultimate simplicity.
It is a life insurance plan, UH, a cash value
and there are all kinds of variation a cash value.

(27:01):
It's not it's not a term insured. It's a cash
value life insurance that has a long term care writer
attachment to it. So when you when you need it,
you first go through the life insurance and then you
go through the long term care. But but the thing
is it says needed as an asset. So if you
if you don't use it, your family gets uh the

(27:22):
life insurance. If you use it all there are some
companies that will actually pay a residual even if you
even if you've used up all the life insurance. The
other thing before I forget that, it's also important if
you own a life insurance policy, even if it's a
term or whole life, it's an asset. And before you
think about dropping it, don't drop it. Sell it and

(27:42):
then you and and you'll get money for it. That
would also UH pay for some of your caregiver, So
don't drop your life insurance. Sell it but it laps.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, we've had people on the show talking about that.
That's a whole other discussion with w It's a great thing.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
You cant.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
A lot of people don't realize you could possibly sell
it if if the policy, if the policy allows it.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Right, Uh, they it's an asset. You can sell it,
and it's a it's it's a it's a life settlement
and you and you own the policy. Yes, you can
sell it.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, great, great, all right, good anything? Just any words
of wisdom to leave our listeners with before we have
to sign off.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Glad you asked. I'll go back to hope. It is
not a plan or a strategy. If you want to
make sure that you know that your state plan and
your caregiving plan, have the conversation. Talk to me, talk
to Frank, talk to you know, uh, your wealth advisor,
talk to have the you know, have the conversation. Whether

(28:50):
you do something or not, at least you know you know,
your informed, educated uh about caregiving and what the issues are.
And I'll go back. I'll be redundant. Caregiving is expensive
and if you think not owning a plan is fine,

(29:11):
try paying it for it, you know, uh where the
eight thousand or ten thousand or fifteen thousand, Because it's
getting it's that's that has inflation already attached to it.
It's getting more expensive, right right. I mean when I
see expensive, I mean you know, the caregiving itself.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, that's expensive.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah, sure is.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Raymond, thank you so much for joining us on Boomers Today.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
I really appreciate it. My pleasure.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
I'm on and thank you everybody. Please check check them
out Levine, L A, D I N E, LTC Benefits
check it out. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
Talk to everybody next week.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
You've been listening to Boomers Today with Frank Sampson. To
learn more about today's show, visit Boomers Today Radio dot
com and join us next time for another edition of
Boomers Today