Long-term care (LTC) insurance policies: Rejection hurts.
An insurance agent from a large, widely-known insurance company recently told me that 50% of all applicants for long-term care (LTC) insurance are rejected. Boy, with those statistics, it’s hardly worth pursuing, knowing that the hurt of rejection might be in your future.
John Matthews, Caring.com senior editor and attorney gives all of us a reality check:
“No one has a ‘right’ to buy long-term care insurance. That results in insurance companies refusing to sell policies to people they think are likely to collect on the policies soon, or who might collect for a long time. If an insurance company thinks the odds are that it might not make money on you, it won’t sell you a policy.”
WOW – that’s encouraging isn’t it?
While doing research for this article, I found the information provided by insurance brokers about LTC insurance to be very enlightening. Apparently many LTC insurance companies will accept you as an insured if you have had open-heart surgery, but will balk at covering someone who has arthritis. Why you may ask? I was told it is because the insured with heart issues will die before needing benefits whereas the person with arthritis will most likely become disabled and therefore cost the insurance company too much money in benefits payout.
Wow – that’s depressing, and somewhat maudlin, isn’t it?
I stand by my earlier article, Long Term Care Insurance Scares Me. Insurers are trying to sell a product for which so few are eligible. I thought I was scared before. Now that I’ve done my research, I’m petrified!
Please share your experiences trying to obtain LTC insurance. Whether you were accepted or rejected – we want to know. If you were rejected and appealed the insurance company’s decision – we REALLY want to hear about it.
Living: the ultimate team sport 
January 23, 2015 at 1:23 pm
[…] Long-term care (LTC) insurance policies: rejection hurts, posted June 2012 […]
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December 3, 2012 at 8:59 am
My husband, a smoker, was accepted for LTC insurance. I am a nonsmoker with asthma and was rejected. Huh? This doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m beginning to understand after reading this website.
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December 3, 2012 at 9:07 am
I’ve begun to believe that it’s an arbitrary decision process reliant on the person who reviews the medical files – and their given mood that day. At least one of you has LTC insurance…I guess you hope something happens where he needs it and you don’t? What a horrible way to think – but the same dilemma exists in our household. My husband was accepted and I wasn’t and their reasoning for rejecting me didn’t make sense at all and had no bearing on anything in my medical records – I know this because I requested ALL of my medical records so I could be looking at the same paperwork that the insurance adjuster was looking at. I fought them – through the State insurance commissioner – and he said that since the issue revolves around the application process – not the claims process – the insurance commissioner does not really have a say. Why? No LTC insurance company is required to accept someone onto their plan. The insurance commissioner could step in for a claims complaint but had no say in the application process unless the LTC insurance company had made glaring procedural errors.
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