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June 08, 2015 at 03:00 AM
Mike Bacon has been in the long-term care (LTC) planning market for about 10 years, and he says that, from where he sits, that market looks fine.
He is not selling many stand-alone long-term care insurance (LTCI) policies these days. ”It’s fairly rare now,” he said.
But the East Lansing, Mich., agent said he has plenty of carriers to choose from, even when he’s talking to clients interested in stand-alone LTCI. 
Carrier exits are overblown, he said. There may “only” be 14 carriers left, but “14 carriers is still a lot of choice,” Bacon (photo, right) said.
For more about why Bacon is happy with the state of the LTC planning market, and a little about how he gets the business that keeps him happy, read on.
See also: 10 client objections to LTC Insurance and how asset-based products overcome them
1. He’s made peace with hybrids.
Some agents and brokers in the LTC planning market point out that stand-alone LTCI policies typically offer much better LTC benefits than hybrids, at a much lower price.
They shake their heads at consumers’ objections to buying LTC coverage they may never use, and wonder how many homeowners refuse to buy homeowners insurance because catastrophic fires are rare.
Bacon goes with the flow. ”You can explain all day long that, ‘You’re probably not collecting on your car insurance, are you?’” Bacon said. “It doesn’t convince anyone.”
Consumers like hybrids better because they like knowing that they’ll collect something in the form of LTC benefits or annuity income, or that beneficiaries will get a life insurance death benefit, Bacon said.
When clients do buy stand-alone LTCI, he’s comfortable with selling them coverage with a purchase-increase option, or modest inflation protection, rather than the 5 percent compound annual inflation protection option he might have sold 10 years ago.
LTC costs have not gone up that quickly in his area, and he said he’s noticed that just about all of the big LTCI premium increases apply to the inflation protection, not the original coverage.
He does still like policies set up in such a way that the coverage issuer takes care of paying the LTC provider.
Otherwise, he said, “Joe’s kids” still have to figure out how to deal with the LTC bills.
Another problem, he said, is that, in some bad cases, “Joe’s kid might just steal the money.”
