Choosing Your Long Term Care Elimination Period Wisely
Have you noticed that the most common advice which people receive in line with buying a long term care insurance policy is how to keep the annual premium low? Lower your maximum daily benefit amount, shorten your maximum benefit period and lengthen your long term care elimination period are just among the usual pieces of advice on long term care (LTC) that you will hear from the experts.
Although effective in most cases, those pieces of advice may not be applicable in all situations. For example, if you’re going to opt for a 360-day elimination period or waiting period do you have enough resources to pay a caregiver or home health aide?
Though most senior folks who are currently receiving care in nursing homes required in-home care at the onset of LTC, this is not a pattern which everybody needs to follow. Some people would immediately require nursing home care as soon as a benefit trigger occurs while there are others that last for years at home and only require institutional care for a couple of months to a year.
How you would receive care is really up to you. That’s the beauty of having an LTCI policy but then it is necessary that you calculate your nest egg and other financial resources before deciding which elimination period to get for your long term care insurance (LTCI) policy.
Note that it is only upon completion of your policy’s elimination period that your benefits will start pouring in. Failure to comply with your policy’s elimination period will hinder you from receiving your policy’s benefits.
Determining Your Long Term Care Elimination Period
Before anything else, the first thing that you should consider before looking at the days of your elimination period is your budget.
If you are confident that your nest egg will get you through a year in a nursing home then by all means secure a policy with a 360-day waiting period. However, if you think there’s a big possibility that you will run out of cash before completing your elimination period then you’re better off with a shorter waiting period.
Next to your budget, the cost of care in your area should definitely factor in so study it well before deciding on the length of your elimination period. Checking the cost of care in your place should actually coincide with budget checkup because without the budget you cannot possibly afford LTC.
Budget and cost of care apart, the provision of your elimination period is something which you should also dissect. The reason this should be done is the fact that every insurance company calculates or measures each policyholder’s elimination period in different ways.
Some companies would start counting the days of your elimination period from the day that you acquired care and every day thereafter regardless if you received care or not. There are others, however, that only count the days on which you actually received care. Don’t take this aspect for granted because you might end up not receiving a single penny from your policy.
Your long term care elimination period may seem a trivial part of your policy since the benefit amount and benefit period are getting all of the attention. In reality, the waiting period will determine whether you’ll be receiving your benefits or not.
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