Long Term Care: Pre-existing Conditions

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Finishing Well, brought to you by cardinalguide.com, with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil, best-selling author and financial planner helping families finish well for over 40 years. On Finishing Well, we'll examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing well, including discussions on managing social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes. Now let's get started with Finishing Well.

Welcome to Finishing Well, with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil. Today's show is long-term care pre-existing conditions. And so, you know, pre-existing conditions, a lot of us have experienced that at some point in time with health insurance, you know, when it comes to long-term care insurance. Obviously, the Bible speaks to this issue. From my perspective, you know, we have this pre-existing condition if you were born, you know, you were born into sin. And so all of us face that. And, you know, Satan, he definitely recognizes that you have a pre-existing condition.

And he would just assume you never did anything about your pre-existing condition. But if you think about it, the way that you overcome your pre-existing conditions, you know, in order to be able to get to heaven is just simply the word grace, right? It's through Jesus, when he came, he was full of grace and truth.

And his grace makes it available for us to take on his redemption, his blood, in order to cover our sin. And so that word grace becomes really important when you think about it from a healthcare standpoint. As I think about, you know, my own situation with my father, you know, he didn't have long-term care insurance. And so when the time came, and he fell, and he needed this kind of care, and he had the money to pay for it himself, but he literally threw the people out of the house because, you know, it was so expensive.

And he didn't, you know, he didn't want to deal with the people. And so it was actually Tammy and I that were needing grace at this point in time, and it wasn't available. So what Tammy and I did, and I had pre-existing, you know, those who know me well know I had cancer, and I've had several things that you can imagine. Well, Robbie, yeah, you had a lot of pre-existing conditions. Well, we found, in this case, what this show is going to be about today, that I could find grace for this and be able to provide for my family.

So if the point in time comes, right, that I take a fall like my father did, and my kids are wondering, what are we going to do with dad, right, I have a policy. Well, you do. And so does your wife. Yeah, and so does she. And, you know, it helps us both to think, well, if this kind of thing happens, you know, we're covered.

And it's grace. Well, I think that neither one of you, in fact, I know that neither one of you would be eligible for a traditional long-term care policy. So if that's all we would have to offer, I mean, I think that you may have rejected it because of the price. When we get right down to it, a traditional long-term care policy is going to do what is called full underwriting.

Both of you would have been rejected. You're like a lot of people at your age, is that only 10% of the people that should have a policy or could have a policy and should have a policy and can afford it actually have a policy. And the other 90% are uninsured.

And this number hasn't really moved for the 44 years I've been selling this stuff. What we're going to talk about today is for those of you that have preexisting conditions, we're going to talk about what you're going to do to prepare for what is almost the inevitable is you needing some care at some point in your lifetime. And if you don't prepare for this time, then all the decisions are going to be made during a crisis. And by a crisis is you're not going to be driving the bus at this point. I mean, you're the one in the crisis, so you're the needing the care just like your father wasn't driving the bus. You were driving the bus and your brothers and sisters and your wife and you were just trying to figure out some way to get care in there for him at home. And the way you figured out was to bring in home health care because he sure wasn't going to one of those nursing homes or assisted living. He had been there after the hospital and you didn't really care how much it cost.

He did. He had more than enough money to pay for it. And so the issue is he really needs this care. It's going to keep him at home. He's got enough money to pay for it. There's an agency.

I helped you find an agency and set all that up. That part of it was pretty easy. But once your father find out about all this, he threw him out.

He was healthy enough to do that. Yeah, which, you know, I had an interesting lesson in that. But those who know me well know I had COVID here, you know, a couple of three weeks ago. And you don't think what you talk about when you're in a crisis, things change, especially if you're 85 years old. So I'm just 65 years old.

I'm not 85. And due to COVID, my blood pressure skyrocketed like 210 over, you know, 115, whatever it was, I had to get the hospital, I had to get the hospital right away. Well, Tammy had COVID.

So she couldn't go with me. So it was either call an ambulance or me drive, right. And so my blood pressure is at 215. And I'm here the Christian car guy goes taken off to make this trip into Winston to the emergency room. Well, I am so aggravated because my blood pressure is so high.

I'm just furious at every driver that's going by. And so as we were thinking about as I was thinking about this conversation, yeah, when I'm 85, I'm not going to be in a position that that I'm not cantankerous about how I feel, especially after I've just fallen, or had some crisis. And you're really not in a position to make good sound. And neither are your kids, by the way, if they need your approval of it. And so so many of these people that idea I deal with people in this crisis, like all the time, it's on a weekly basis. And I'm counseling the kids typically, sometimes it's the parents and the kids. And the real issue is we just got to get somebody in there, we got to get some help in there.

And that's kind of hard, actually a little extra hard during these COVID times to find the caregivers, but we figured out we find them. And the people with the most money are the hardest ones to get them to part with some of it. Especially if you think about that age, if you've saved money all the time, and you have assets, and you've been conservative, and then all of a sudden your kids are wanting to pay somebody 25 bucks an hour. It'll be more when you're 85 and I'm 85. You want to pay them 25 bucks an hour for several hours a day. And you just see this as not needed.

And you just, you know, it's just hard. So what we're really going to talk about today is short term care insurance, which is the first $50,000 or the first $100,000 of the bill. We can offer this insurance in most states all the way through age 89, including North Carolina and South Carolina, the policies are in all the policies that we talk about. And it has very simple underwriting. And if you buy only the home health care portion, it has even simpler underwriting than the policy that you bought, which pays for a year of home health care, and then it pays for a year of assisted living or nursing home care. And those are separate benefits.

So you could really get two years out of the deal. And it's very affordable. And you can qualify, most people can qualify for it. And so what we're really talking about here is this is not just for people of limited means, because it's not as expensive as the big long term care, which is going to take care of three, four, $500,000 of expenses. This thing is only going to take care of $50,000, $100,000, $150,000 maybe depending upon the benefits, but it's really the front end of the bill. So if you're self insured, if you just decided not to buy this stuff, but you're doing that because you have the money to pay for it, all I'm saying is, let's get some coverage for the front end.

I think you can, most people can qualify for this. And then it's going to be much easier to talk you into when you're 85 is spending the insurance company's money to get you started, than it is to get you to spend your own money. I love the story you talk about if your garage burned down.

I mean, I think that illustrates it beautifully. Yeah, I just said, you know, if you're well to do, and you have a separate garage, and first of all, if you're 85, and you have a separate garage, you probably have it insured. I mean, that's where the whole self insurance, but let's just assume, you know, you didn't, and it burns down, you're going to make a decision of whether you're going to rebuild it at 85 or not. I mean, you may just clear the rubble and just not have a garage.

And then you're going to look at, let's rebuild it. And then it's going to cost me $50,000 or $30,000 or something, and then I'll pay for it. But if it's insured, there's no decision. Okay, I mean, just, and so people that say they're self insured with long term care, a lot of them, they have insurance on their home, on their cars, on their boats, you know, I just, they got insurance on everything. And, you know, they could afford to replace that too. So just so we're clear, as people with money, regardless of your age, and even not regardless of your health, but even with a lot of pre existing conditions, we can get a plan of insurance for the first $50,000, $100,000 of the bill in place for you.

So you can spend the insurance company's money on the front end. That's what short term care does for people. You can really think about, you know, if I, you know, 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, if I've been paying on these premiums for however many years, and I have been gladly, and but all of a sudden, wow, I need home health care. I'm excited to call those people in here. Sure. I'm gonna get a chance to get get my claim that I you know, I've been waiting for.

Yeah. So there won't be a hesitation. Because let's talk about somebody on the other end of the spectrum. Just had a lady. She wasn't in my office. She was on the phone. As a COVID talking to her son, I know these people. And she's got her social security check, a little small pension income, sold her house years ago, she's 81. And they're on the phone with me trying to arrange all her assets so that if she has a long term care event, she can go on Medicaid.

So I'm giving them some advice about that. And I also kind of brought up Are you sure you want to do that, you know, because her son has some, some money about him, not a huge amount, but he's he's doing real well for himself. And what I think is going to happen is if she needs to go into care, or she needs to bring care into home, he's going to end up paying for it. And or they're going to bring her into their home or something. They're not going to just immediately send her to a nursing home and try to apply for Medicaid.

And I convinced him of that. And what we ended up selling her was a policy that pays for home health care, it pays 1200 a week. And it pays it for 52 weeks. And it just sends you a check for the 1200 bucks.

And you've only got to have three visits from a home health care agency in any given week to qualify for the whole 1200. So it gives you a lot of flexibility about paying a younger relative or somebody from the church to be there part of the time, it just gives a lot of flexibility. And so that's just really buying them a year of time.

So they can figure out what they're going to do after that. And they were all they were all for it. They signed up and having a friend who went into a Medicaid nursing home, I can assure you, and I would not wish that on any, any human being. Well, we got a whole lot more about pre existing conditions long term care today on finishing well. So remember, this show is brought to you by Cardinal guide.com. Cardinal guide.com is where you'll find Hans's book, The Complete Cardinal guide to planning for and living retirement. Of course, the chapter we're talking about today long term care is certainly in that book.

And it's an easy resource to be available. All you got to do is just email Hans, tell him you want the book, or you can get the download on today's chapter. All those things available at cardinal guide.com.

We'll be right back. Thank you. Hans and I would love to take our show on the road to your church Sunday school Christian or civic group. Here's a chance for you to advance the kingdom through financial resources by leveraging Hans expertise and qualified charitable contributions, veterans aid and attendance, IRA, Social Security, Medicare and long term care. Just go to cardinal guide.com and contact Tom to schedule a live recording of finishing well at your church Sunday school Christian or civic group contact Hans at cardinal guide.com.

That's cardinal guide.com. Welcome back to finishing well with certified financial planner Hans Shile today show we're talking about pre existing or long term care pre existing conditions. And so you got some outlining for us that we can cover most anybody, right? Well, we can and underwriting or the fact whether you can get it or not is is a huge deterrent to people even looking into long term care. If I had to tell you how many people tell me when we're bringing them in for financial planning, they tell me on the front, oh, I can't qualify for long term care. Maybe they tried before. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they just gave their health history to somebody over the phone or some salesperson that was selling traditional long term care. They've got it in their mind.

They can't qualify. And I'm going to tell you that a whole bunch of those people can qualify for this. And then what what I put together for my salespeople because they have trouble keeping track of all this stuff real time for people is we have eight different solutions in the realm of what is called short term care basic care, which is one year of coverage for home health care or assisted living coverage. And then some of these policies only cover home health care, but they do it very well at 1200 bucks a week for 52 weeks.

And the qualifications are very easy. And you say, Well, why do you have eight? Well, like all eight of them are available in North and South Carolina. So we really don't necessarily need all eight of them. But across the country, there's nine states that don't have any of them, except for well, actually, they have two of them. There's six, there's they have no short term care.

So, you know, we work all over the United States, and we're in 50 states in DC. So we need to have something for everybody and something for everybody with pre existing conditions. And so I tell you a couple of quick stories is that we have a client who was diagnosed with ALS on the way in as a client a year and a half ago. And I helped him get his Medicare and his Medicare supplement.

And we navigated all the underwriting on that. His spouse is under 65. And then we started talking about how we're going to pay for his care. And it was real obvious to them, and pretty obvious to me, that he's not going to be able to qualify for any long term care insurance.

So I really, I just put my thinking cap on and we decided that we're going to spend his IRA, which has about $300,000, which is most of their money on care, when he needs it. He still doesn't need it yet. He's still getting around okay.

He's walking. But she sees, it's common where he's going to be, they're actually need a van to get him around. And she's going to be the one doing the care. And it's going to ultimately wear her out.

And she knows that. And so we were able to get them get him signed up a year and a half ago for this plan. It's a membership, it's a service contract, where they pay in about $2,000 a year. And for the $2,000 a year, they get 3000 hours of home health care in his lifetime.

3000 hours. And there's some other contingencies on it. I want to explain it. But she now knows that when he ultimately needs care, that she's a she's going to be able to use this. It's not an insurance policy. It's a service contract that you pay into to bring in five days a week, five hours a day, home health care, which is going to be a huge help to her. Okay.

Yeah. And when I think about, you know, in my own family, as I looked at it, my mother died of cancer. And it got to the point for her with my sister taking care of her, that, you know, she came out of the hospital, she needed, you know, some type of care. And so she went into a facility for whatever it was three weeks.

And they said, Well, we, you know, Medicare won't pay this for this anymore. And so off, she came back to my sister's house, because there was literally no place she didn't have that kind of thing. And those last days for my sister, were very good. My brother came in to help her and Oh, my goodness, what what it would have meant for my mom to have one year is actually only she would have needed maybe five months. And the same thing with my father, just one year would have made just a huge difference. The this plan has the easiest health questions.

Go. It just basically says, Do you now or are you now receiving help with bathing, dressing, eating, transferring, okay, from either professionals or even from family. So if you're getting help with those things, now, you can't buy this policy. But he wasn't then he's still not so he could he could still buy this a year and a half into ALS, he could still buy this plan.

So we've got that in all 50 states in DC. And then I sold him another plan from an insurance company, that the only thing it asks is kind of a similar question. It just asked, Are you receiving home health care?

Yes or no? And he wasn't, he still isn't. So he could buy that today. And that pays for 60 days of home health aid at 120 bucks a day. And then it also pays for skilled care. He's going to need respiratory therapists. And that pays like 150 bucks a day.

He's going to need occupational therapy, physical therapy. And all that stuff is going to be brought in, we may get some of that automatic care. And even if we do, this thing is still going to pay. So it's very simple underwriting. And that we were able to write that on a guy that was diagnosed ALS. I'm not sure if the insurance company would have appreciated me doing that.

But we write it a lot on a lot of perfectly healthy people. And she's taken a lot of comfort in knowing that she's got that plan there in place. I just talked to her two days ago. And it was just encouraging her, when you need this, even before you need it, let's start it.

Let's not get you worn down before we kick it in. Now, I have another client who I've talked about on the show before. And she wouldn't qualify for the short-term care insurance that you have, Robbie, like three or four years ago. Well, probably four or five years ago, three or four, five, when the first time I offered it, she would have, but she didn't want to do it then. Then when she started to have some problems, I brought it up again, and then she wouldn't qualify for it. And so what we did with her money that she inherited, we took it and we put it into some annuities that will actually, that have no health questions. And they will actually create a cash flow to pay for care.

So we got all kinds of solutions for people with health problems. But what I did sell her was the same thing, the same insurance policy I sold the guy with ALS. And I sold that to her about a year and a half ago. And she just is coming out of the hospital about three weeks ago from a very serious surgery, went to the rehab. And then what we were able to work out is she didn't go home, she went to a residential care facility, which is like one of these high end, go in there, they serve you all your meals, you have your own little apartment.

She's there on a temporary basis, but I think it's going to be permanent. And this policy is paying the 60 days of the home health aid. And every day she's getting occupational therapy, it's paying 150 bucks for that. Every day she's getting physical therapy, it's paying 150 bucks for that. And Medicare is paying for those things. But she's getting 300 bucks a day for those two things and 120 a day for the home health aid that's doing number of visits in there. She could buy this insurance with almost no health questions. So I'm just explaining the most extreme and what that's done, it's allowed her to stay out of a nursing home and to go into her own home. And now she wants to get out of that residential facility. She wants to get back home. I don't think it's going to be smart for her to do that. But when she does that, this insurance is still going to pay benefits for home health care at home, which she'd have a hard time parting with her own cash to do that.

Right. Well, the other thing that, you know, works is that Medicare will pay for a certain period of time. But since your insurance company is paying for it too, right? And this is an indemnity, am I using the right word? It is absolutely an indemnity. It's not a reimbursement. A couple of these short term care policies that we sell, two of the eight are reimbursement policies. But the one you have, which is the one we sell the most of, is an indemnity payment. So that means that if you get the care on a given day, or in yours, it's a week of home health care, if you get those three visits, they just send you a check for 1200 bucks. They don't care who paid for them. They don't care how much you spent.

If you met the minimum criteria, you get a check, and then you can use that to modify your home. You can pay somebody from the church. Or you can bank the money for when Medicare doesn't pay for it.

Yeah, I mean, you can do all kinds of things. And it's just, it is so easy to get these older people that are facing problems. I'm dealing with this lady's daughter, had to get the power of attorney sharpened up. Well, I mean, that was an interesting thing, just getting her all there and getting the attorney to put it together. And I brought it to them. And then she brought it over to my house.

And they went to the bank and got it signed and notarized. I mean, but we had to do all that. But it's really, I'm basically dealing with the daughter. And the mother would not agree to this care. She's just, she's not in a good state right now. But she's all for getting everything she can out of this insurance I sold her. Well, it's understandable. I mean, yeah, it just is. And, but the even complaining about it a little bit and the daughter, you know, and I've just gotten just, just, you know, I want you to understand that she couldn't qualify for the stuff that's better than this. And then secondly, I offered the stuff that's even better five years ago, and she flat turned it down. So I'm telling this to the daughter, not to her, but I just, no, no, no, no, no, just, you know, essentially be nice.

Darrell Bock Yeah. But it gets back to like we talked to at the beginning of the show that grace is for your children, right? You're going to be sick. You're not going to feel good. You really are not in a good position to make these decisions. Like when I was driving to the hospital with my blood pressure, I should have taken an ambulance, according to my daughter.

And she was right. Because, you know, we do things that we shouldn't have done. But fortunately, you know, doing these things now when we're in of the right mind, is really giving grace to our kids so they don't have to, you know, like I would have been able to do for either of my parents, which would have just played so much better for our family, and decisions that are that are doable right now.

And so while we, like always, our shows go by too quick. But this whole chapter, which is on long term care is available in Hans's book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, which is available at cardinalguide.com. Don't forget the guide after cardinal and cardinalguide.com. There you can, you know, ask Hans questions, you know, get a consultation, whatever it is that you feel like along these lines, which I know, not only be grace for you and for your peace of mind, but it'd be definitely grace for those in your family. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Well brought to you by cardinalguide.com. Visit cardinalguide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as social security, Medicare, IRAs, long term care, life insurance, investments and taxes, as well as Hans best selling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement and the workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows or to get Hans book, go to cardinalguide.com. If you have a question, comment or suggestion for future shows, click on the Finishing Well radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com. Cardinalguide.com. This is the Truth Network.