One of the newest developments in the long term care insurance market has been the addition of “partnership” LTC coverage. Partnership long term care insurance policies are a combined effort between insurance companies and the government to incentivize consumers to purchase an LTC policy.
To qualify for long term care coverage under Medicaid, you would have to spend down nearly all of your assets, down to about $2,000. For anyone with assets they want to preserve, this is not the optimal solution for long term care and you may want to protect those assets for your spouse, children, or other beneficiaries.
Many states have introduced the partnership policy to help consumers preserve their assets, while still being able to qualify for Medicaid if they exhaust their long term care insurance benefits. In short, a partnership policy will let you keep one dollar of assets for every dollar in benefits paid under your long term care policy. Here’s a couple examples:
1. Rachael has $500,000 in retirement assets and a partnership long term care policy with a maximum benefit of $300,000. After her long term care policy’s benefits have been exhausted, she would need to spend down $200,000 of her own assets before qualifying for Medicaid – since she had a partnership policy, the state will still allow her to keep $300,000 in assets instead of requiring her to spend all of that money on care in a nursing home or other facility.
2. Sarah has $500,000 in retirement assets and a partnership long term care policy with a maximum benefit of $750,000. After her LTC benefits have been exhausted, she can immediately qualify for Medicaid without having to spend any additional money. This is because her partnership policy allowed her to keep up to $750k in assets and still qualify for Medicaid immediately.
Every state has different requirements for a policy to qualify for the partnership program, but generally the main requirement is to have at least 2-3 years of benefits and a compound inflation protection benefit.
States that have partnership programs in place are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illininois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
States that do not yet have a partnership program (but may in the future) are Alaska, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Utah, Washington DC, and West Virginia.
To get a quote and compare long term care insurance policies from the top LTC companies in the industry, please give us a call at 1-888-972-0024 or CLICK HERE to send us an e-mail 24 hours a day. We can help design a long term care policy to suit your personal needs and budget. Due to the complex nature of structuring long term care plans, there is currently no way for us to offer instant online quoting.