I am 78. Can I still get long-term care coverage?

Not long ago a 78-year-old asked me whether it was too late to arrange long-term care coverage. It was not. This policy accepts applications up to age 80, so at 78 there was still comfortable room.

The structure is worth understanding first. It is a fixed annuity with long-term care built on top. The interest rate is 5.5%, which is not especially high, because growing the asset is not what this product is for. The point is that it lets you draw up to three times what you put in as care benefit.

For this client we structured a $100,000 deposit into $300,000 of care benefit. In practice that pays out as $4,167 a month for 72 months, or six years.

That $300,000 is not a fixed ceiling either. While it goes unused it keeps growing at 5.5%, so if care is needed in ten years the figure is closer to $330,000, and in twenty years somewhere around $355,000 to $360,000.

How simple the application is matters just as much. Traditional long-term care underwriting means a two-to-three-hour phone interview and a detailed medical review. Here, around ten health items are checked on paper and the interview runs about fifteen minutes, with a short cognitive check for applicants between 70 and 80. The carrier usually responds within two or three hours and tells you on the spot whether you qualify at two times or three times your deposit. In the cases I have handled, most people qualified at three.

There is no waiting period to be covered. The elimination period common to every long-term care plan still applies: ninety days if care is received in a facility, while home care pays from the start.

One thing to plan for is that this is funded with a single lump sum rather than monthly premiums. Before 70 there are options you can build up over time, but past 70 a lump sum is usually how it works. There is also an annual charge for the three-times benefit, deducted as it goes.

If long-term care is never needed, the remaining contract value passes to your heirs. The money does not simply disappear if you stay well.

Being younger widens the options. I recently helped a 60-year-old woman who had a medical history that made other carriers difficult. On the same product we added an inflation option, so the benefit starts at $3,255 a month today and increases over time, which suits her because the odds of needing care are far higher in ten, twenty or thirty years than right now.

Please do not rule yourself out on age alone. Start by finding out what is actually available to you today.

The rates and product terms in this post were current when it was written. They vary by carrier and by state and can change without notice. I will confirm what is available today when we speak.