When Long Term Care Insurance Pays
by Susan Zimmerman, ChFC, CLU, LMFT
If long term care insurance is a product you provide for clients, you have probably studied some of the statistics about how many people in certain age groups will need this coverage. Product features and benefits are always important, but so often the benefits extend way beyond the dollars paid.
It is always a strange tug that happens psychologically when a client has an insurance claim. Whether it is for life, disability, or long term care, a claim means something bad has happened. Your client has died, become disabled, or has failed health requiring nursing home care. Our emotions clash as we simultaneously feel sorrow at the bad news, yet relief and gratitude that the client has coverage to help them manage the financial drain.
If we as insurance professionals recognize some of the psychological issues that insurance claims trigger, we can begin to see even more deeply into the extended benefits that happen in families when a long term care insurance policy begins paying a claim.
I suppose it’s because of my background as a family therapist that I observe and inquire of clients about the extended family relationship management issues when caring for an elderly parent. Think about it. How often are adult siblings ever in similar financial situations so they can equally contribute to a parent’s health care expenses? And if they are able to help, are they all equally willing? Rarely! The family dynamics around the physical and financial care of aging parents can be exasperating. When the care giving falls into the lap of just one or the minority of several siblings, you can almost hear the adult children revert to their childhood patterns, loaded with unresolved sibling rivalry and crying out “No fair!”
Granted, they have most likely found more sophisticated ways of verbally communicating this objection, but if we advisors are really listening, we can see and hear the psychological relief (not to mention the financial) when long term care policies pay their benefits. A client of mine who has four adult siblings recently told me her greatest appreciation of the long term care policy that pays for her mother’s nursing home costs is that she doesn’t have to try and collect or negotiate the extraction of money from her uninvolved siblings. She has accepted her role as the primary physical care giver, but if the sole burden of nursing home costs fell to her, she believes it would create what we identified as “irreconcilable resentment.” The long term care policy serves as the family peace keeper.
So next time you talk about long term care with clients, ask them about the extended family members. Who is doing what assistance? How do the financial abilities and attitudes differ? As their advisor, why not become a “resentment preventer” and frame long term care insurance as a way to keep the peace among the family members who would be shouldering the financial responsibility for their loved one’s care? That sure helps the siblings do a better job of “playing fair.” Their parents never did enjoy breaking up those fights, and long term care insurance helps make it a non-issue.