Important Long Term Care Insurance Terms

It's important to understand some common terms and phrases used by your long term care insurance, particularly before you sign on the dotted line and purchase a policy.

• Waiting Period/Elimination Period: The deductible period during which you pay for long term care out of pocket for a specified amount of time before you can receive policy benefits.
• Tax-Qualified: A policy that is tax-qualified will allow you to deduct a certain amount of your premiums from your taxes as a medical expense.
• Inflation Protection: Automatically increases your benefits by a certain percentage to keep pace with rising long term care costs.
• Waiver of Benefits: This provision ensures that you will not have to pay premiums once you start receiving benefits.

When you are ready to start shopping for long term care insurance policies, be sure to use the convenient form on InsuranceBureau. One form can be used to get quotes from several different long term care insurance providers, saving you time and money.

Sources

1. What features of long-term care policies should I focus on? Retrieved April 23, 2008, from http://www.iii.org/individuals/longtermcare/ltc_features/
2. What is Long-Term Care? (2008). Retrieved April 23, 2008, from https://wwwapps.tdi.state.tx.us/inter/asproot/consumer/ltcrgsearch/ltcrgintro.html