The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, provided a number of useful benefits to millions of Americans. But Obamacare doesn't address one key health risk that everyone faces, forcing you to make alternative arrangements to protect yourself from potentially catastrophic expenses.
In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning, talks about how Obamacare doesn't cover long-term care expenses. Dan notes that traditional health-insurance policies don't typically cover the costs of skilled nursing care or home-health services, and even Medicare doesn't provide much coverage to older Americans. Dan notes that long-term care insurance policies are available, but Genworth Financial (GNW +1.81%), Prudential (PRU +1.87%), MetLife (MET +1.28%), and other insurance companies have scaled back their offerings or raised their premium prices extensively because of the poor profitability from providing long-term care insurance. Dan concludes that you have to make your own decision about how to protect against the risk of needing long-term care, but that good solutions are hard to come by.
