Health Care Planning Important For Boomers

“As they approach retirement, baby boomers are asking, ‘What am I going to do for my health insurance?’ They are anxious and want to know.”

That is how Eugene Rowe describes the mood among older boomers (age 50 to 59) when they visit his office.

Financial advisors must decide how to assist boomers with this, says the chief executive officer of R&R Retirement Insurance Services LLC, Encino, Cal.

He and other experts say the strategy will vary by age and situation, but the advisor does need a strategy.

It starts with discussing the boomer client’s health status, says Rowe. “Ask how they have been taking care of themselves. Getting annual check-ups? Regular exercise? Eating healthy? What about drinking and smoking? Lifestyle issues?

“The carriers do want to know about these factors,” he says. And it opens up the door to discussing insurance options, several of which are highlighted below.

Advisors say boomers are facing several critical factors that are fueling a sense of urgency related to health care planning.

“It’s like the ‘perfect storm,’” says Carroll Busher, owner of Financial Care Services, Grand Rapids, Mich.

“The government has been consistently sending a message that ‘you have to be responsible for yourself,’” says Busher. “The government won’t do it for you.”

He points to the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. That signaled that the federal government is moving away from defined health care benefits under Medicare and toward defined contribution health care plans, Busher says. “It’s the same as what happened when the country moved from defined benefit pension plans to 401(k) (defined contribution) retirement plans.”

There will be a continual shift to private methods of funding health care, he says.

Rowe offers a laundry list of other pressures at work on boomers: “Increasing numbers of boomers are living alone. Many are aware that people are living longer than in previous eras. Many are also caught in the middle of the ‘sandwich,’ between helping aging parents and putting their older children through college. And many are now seeing friends, co-workers and family members go through health crises of one kind or another.”

In addition, the ‘birth dearth’ in the early 1970s means there are fewer nurses and caregivers who are, and will be, available to care for boomers as they move through retirement, says Busher.

“The good news is that many older boomers have awakened to their situation,” says Peter Gelbwaks, president of Gelbwaks Insurance Services Inc., Plantation, Fla. “They show a lot more concern than they did in the 1990s.”

Experts generally agree that this awareness is helping build boomer receptivity to hearing ideas about how to finance their care as they move into retirement. For instance, Gelbwaks sees more and more boomers who now want to buy long term care insurance.

But matching the awareness of need with the appropriate financial solution requires that advisors understand boomer preferences and finances, he says. It is a point made by other advisors, again and again. Here are examples:

Simplicity and affordability. Boomers will reject coverage if it’s seen as too complicated or too expensive, says Gelbwaks. So, with that in mind, he often offers boomers a type of LTC policy that uses a cash, rather than reimbursement, model. Boomers consider these to be more understandable and affordable, he says.

Similarly, Alan Shoff, a partner at Shoff & Shoff Insurance Agency, Santa Monica, Cal., who sells health insurance, concentrates on offering affordable health coverage. In fact, he says, “my advice to boomers is to ‘spend as little on premium as you can.’”

This often translates into recommending a Health Savings Account (HSA) plan. This gives boomers more control over their health care dollars, Shoff says, because the boomer can choose when and if to take funds out of the HSA to pay for health expenses (up to the deductible in the companion high-deductible health insurance policy). When it makes things better for the client, “I’ll recommend this, even is it means less commission for me,” says Shoff.

Busher, too, likes using HSAs for boomers. “You can bank dollars in the HSA account, pre-tax, and the money comes out free for health care expenses–and you can take the money out all through retirement.”