Excerpt from: New York Times (click for full article)
Long term care policies pay for help with daily activities and care, like dressing, bathing and feeding, either at home or in an assisted-living facility or a nursing home. Without the coverage provided by the policy, Mr. Shapiro said, his father would be living in a nursing home — something Mr. Shapiro, who lives in Woodstock, N.Y., dreads. “I can’t imagine living in a nursing home,” he said in a phone interview. “The thought of it disturbs me.”
So this year, he conferred with an insurance broker and applied for coverage. He is waiting to hear back from two companies, but expects a policy for himself and his wife to cost several thousand dollars a year.
The emotional impact of witnessing the decline of a family member or helping to care for one is often the reason people seek coverage for long-term care, people who work in the aging field say.
“Anything relating to long-term care triggers a lot of emotions, because most of us want to believe we’ll never need it,” said Nora Dowd Eisenhower, economic security director at the National Council on Aging. Many people who consider the policies have firsthand experience caring for an aging parent, she said, and most of them want coverage that will pay for care in their homes.
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