How Long Term Care Elimination Period Affects Policy Premiums
Long term care elimination period may be one of the toughest and hardest aspects of an LTC insurance plan. It requires be carefully analyzing and understanding before an individual can finally choose the right one for his LTC needs in the future.
An LTC insurance’s elimination period is also known as the waiting or qualifying period wherein the policy owners have to spend their own money first when paying for their LTC needs before their insurance provider actually pays for their remaining benefit coverage period. The insured person may choose from the different elimination periods from 0 days up to a maximum of 365 days (although some states may have lower number of maximum days than the standard 365 days).
The most common number of days for elimination period that insurance holders choose is 90 days. It means that a policyholder should have to personally shoulder and pay for the LTC services that he is going to receive for 90 days before he can receive reimbursement or payment from his insurance company.
After his preferred number of days for his elimination period, his insurance provider will then start paying for the services and facilities that he will use and receive to satisfy his LTC needs. However, some insurance companies require that in order for them to start covering the LTC expenses of the policy owner, he must have been receiving primary services aside from respite and hospice care, and must be chronically ill, although the days need not to be consecutive.
An insured individual must always remember that once he has satisfied or has finished paying for his long term care elimination period, he does not have to pay any longer and be assured that his LTC insurance plan will take care of the other days until his benefit coverage period is over.
One more important thing that must be remembered is that since the individual has the freedom to choose the number of days of his policy’s elimination period, he must consider his financial resources and make sure that he can afford to pay it until it is time for his policy to pay his LTC services.
This is due to the fact that elimination period, when not properly analyzed and considered, may give financial burden to the individual. A shorter elimination period of 30 to 60 days might be good enough but this may also mean that the rates and monthly premiums of his LTC insurance plan might be more expensive than those with 90 days elimination period.
On the other hand, a policy with 180 to 365 days elimination period has higher chances of getting lower monthly premiums, but the individual will definitely has to pay for it, regardless if the rates have increased or not. This may then put the policyholder in a big risk of allotting a large amount of his budget just to pay for the continuously increasing rates of LTC premiums.
You see, just the basic details regarding long term care elimination period may already confuse some and this is just a beginning of understanding how LTC plans work. Guidance and advise from some elder care experts and insurance agents would really be useful and helpful when it comes to these matters to avoid further misunderstanding of the contract in the future.
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