Do you need long-term care insurance? It's quite possible that you do. After all, there's some pretty scary statistics out there:
- At 65, the average person's chances of being admitted to a nursing home at some point in the future are more than 4 in 10. (Long Term Care Campaign)
- One person in three who turned 65 in 1990 will stay a year in a nursing home. One person in 10 will stay five years or more. (National Association of Insurance Commissioners)
- In 1994, 7.3 million Americans needed long-term care (LTC) services at an average cost of nearly $43,800 per year. By 2000, this number rose to 9 million Americans at nearly $55,750 per year. Because of inflation, by 2060 it will skyrocket to 24 million Americans paying more than $250,000 per year to receive long-term care. (Long Term Care Insurance National Advisory Council)
- Recent studies report that two out of every five people aged 65 and over will enter a nursing home and stay an average of 2.5 years. (Life Insurance Selling, December 1995)
- Within a year after admission as private-pay residents, more than 90% of nursing home residents are impoverished. (Life Savings by Harley Gordon, 1994)
- Nursing home care costs, on average, about $40,000 per year. (State Farm website)
As with all scary statistics, though, take these with a large grain of salt, as they can be, and often are, misleading. For more on this topic, see the article Those Dratted Statistics Made Easier, written by The Motley Fool's retirement expert Dave Braze.
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Learn more about insurance in our Insurance Center. You may not have thought about some kinds of insurance, such as disability or long-term care insurance, but they're vital for many people.
