Employer Costs of Long Term Care Benefits

This employee benefit can be set up on a completely voluntary basis, which means if the employee wishes to participate, they do so at their own cost. There could be some employer, financial involvement. If they wish they could give everybody a certain amount of money per month, or it could, they could buy everybody a certain plan design that is not mandatory. The plan can be set up so that it's completely voluntary.

The company may have an appetite to understand executive benefits. There can be tiers or levels. A benefit for long term care can be tiered on the basis of title, income and tenure. If they already have executive benefits, this could be the next logical consideration.

The main advantages of an employer benefit for long term care are as follows. One is the education. People can understand what this is, and perhaps more importantly, what it isn't. Along with that, there can be an awareness campaign to educate the employees, their spouses, and their families.

There also could be the opportunity for limited to no underwriting for long term care. If somebody has a health history, this could be the difference between securing coverage and not securing coverage. Finally, if a company implements long term care as a benefit, they give people that potentially have had a prior experience. They give their employees, their family members and spouses and significant others the opportunity to get out ahead of this issue before it presents itself to them and their families.

People may want to understand the process that employers go through. It's, you know, first they have to get their questions answered and you know, that that hasn't changed. They have to understand long term care. They have to understand how it's different than their health benefits, how it's different than their disability income benefits and where this may or may not fit in.

The second thing if they want to go forward and proceed is we would need a census of the organization to be able to shop the product to the long term care carrier marketplace that may have interest given their metrics or their state. This will allow us to go to the market on their behalf and give them feedback on which carriers have an interest in their case and help them figure out which carrier is best for their circumstances.