Consumers might know a little more about the value of long-term care (LTC) planning and long-term care insurance (LTCI) – and that isn’t helping all that much.
The problem: even many of the sorts of responsible consumers who vote regularly, buy a respectable amount of automobile insurance and know they ought to prepare for the future are preoccupied with thoughts about short-term survival.
Two LTCI carriers – Bankers Life and Casualty Company, a Chicago, a unit of CNO Financial Group Inc., Carmel, Ind. (NYSE:CNO), and John Hancock Financial, Boston, a unit of Manulife Financial Corp., Toronto (NYSE:MFC) – talk about consumers’ ideas about LTCI in two new survey reports.
Analysts at the Center for a Secure Retirement, a unit of Bankers Life, recently commissioned a survey of 800 U.S. adults that was conducted in September 2011.
An independent research firm called people ages 47 to 75 who had annual household incomes of $25,000 to $75,000. The sample included 400 boomers who were not yet eligible for Medicare and 400 middle-income adults, ages 65 to 75, who are boomers or members of the Silent Generation and are eligible for Medicare.
Bankers Life found plenty of evidence of continuing consumer ignorance about Medicare and LTCI.
Medicare does provide some coverage for skilled nursing care in the home and at facilities for patients who are recovering from acute illnesses, but it does not cover true LTC, or the types of services, such as round-the-clock supervision, homemaker services and personal care services, that candidates for LTC typically need.
Only 37% of the Bankers Life survey participants understood that Medicare provides no coverage for home-based LTC, and just 34% understood that traditional Medicare provides no coverage for facility-based LTC.
John Hancock commissioned a separate survey of 1,000 U.S. residents ages 21 to 75.
John Hancock found that, however ignorant many consumers might be about LTC planning, general awareness has increased since 2006.
A majority of the participants in the latest survey could answer 7 out of 10 basic LTC questions. In 2006, a majority could answer just 4 questions correctly.
About 82% of the participants in the new survey agreed with the statement that it is irresponsible not to plan for the cost of LTC.