Duane Lipham

CLTC
Duane Lipham is a Certified Long-Term Care (CLTC) consultant who writes extensively on long-term...read more

The Most Common & Expensive Long-Term Care Insurance Mistake

There are many mistakes that can be made when considering long-term care insurance, and some of them can be very costly. Some of the most common mistakes include only getting quotes from one company, not researching long-term care costs, and relying on someone else’s opinion of what policy design is best for your circumstances. All of these mistakes can prove to be expensive. For instance, I often see consumers who just don’t want to put in the time and...Read entire article »

Preserve Your Long-Term Care Coverage with Inflation Protection

Recently I wrote about selecting a daily benefit for your long-term care insurance (LTCI) policy. Making sure that you start your policy with a daily benefit amount that matches the current cost of care is vitally important. But there are a couple of additional steps you’ll need to take if you want to be sure that the buying power of your policy benefits do not erode over time. Inflation constantly chips away at the true value of LTCI benefits....Read entire article »

Long Term Care Insurance: How to Choose the Best Elimination Period

In a long-term care insurance (LTCI) policy, the elimination period is often referred to as the policy deductible. In many ways it is similar to the deductible used in major medical insurance policies. One significant difference is this: rather than a certain dollar amount that you will initially pay for your own care expenses, there is a specified number of days for which you will be responsible for your own care.What are My Options? These days very few carriers offer...Read entire article »

Do You Really Need All Those Long-Term Care Insurance Options?

Long-term care insurance (LTCI) policies are very different from most other kinds of insurance. As a result, even the foundational features of these policies require taking some time to understand before making your final decision. But what about all the other options and features that are not built into the policy and require you to pay extra to get them? In my opinion, LTCI policies are best kept simple. If you have done your homework on setting up the...Read entire article »

Are Tax-Qualified LTCI Policies Consumer Friendly?

When the long-term care insurance (LTCI) industry was in its early stages, the policy features and design differed considerably from what we commonly see offered to consumers today.At the time, LTCI was a relatively new segment of the insurance industry, so there was little history that could be drawn from for reliable sources regarding pricing, underwriting procedures and policy design. As a result, it was kind of like the Wild West in that each carrier typically had their own...Read entire article »