By Nova Ewers, Beach Glass Transitions, LLC
Patricia Nelson-Reade, R.N., CELA, recently gave a presentation on Long Term Care planning to the Cumberland County Networking Group for Senior Service Providers at Sedgewood Commons in Falmouth, Maine.
Today Patty told the group about The Long Term Care Partnership Act. The gist: this act can help you save hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially. Yet, most people are unaware of its existence – including quite a few insurance professionals.
Here are the details:
The Long Term Care Partnership Act “permits purchasers of ‘approved’ long term care insurance policies to protect from Medicaid an amount of assets equal to the amount of the long term care insurance if the purchaser relies on Medicaid after exhaustion of the long term care insurance.” (quoted from Patty’s blog). So in other words, if you purchased an LTCI policy with a $300,000 payout, and you have activated a claim on your policy, you may access MaineCare when your assets are equal to or below $310,000 as opposed to the normal asset limit of $10,000 for a single person without an approved LTCI policy.
Sounds great, right? But the problem is that with the passing of this Act in 2009, it only covered policies sold after the enactment date, which does little for the vast majority of policy holders out there. And insurance companies were refusing to reissue older policies with new policies that could be endorsed in the Partnership Program, even if the old policies met the eligibility criteria because the insurance companies had no incentive to do so and were not required by the Act to do so. So in 2011, Maine added a statute to the Act that said insurance companies must reissue all policies that qualify for the Partnership Program as long as the policy holder submits a request by the determined deadline – September 28, 2012. Read More…