 LTC Bullet: LTCi Pool of Money Calculator Friday, June 14, 2019
Seattle—
LTC Comment: The LTCi Pool of Money Calculator, designed by Ralph Leisle, is an important tool for advisers to help prospects and clients understand the risk and cost of long-term care. The latest after our ***news.***
*** LTC CLIPPINGS bring you one or two daily updates on critical information you need to know to stay at the forefront of professional knowledge. Steve Moses scans the news and LTC literature. He chooses reports, articles, stories and data that LTCI agents, financial advisors, and anyone involved in aging issues need to know. He provides the title, author, source, a hyperlink to the original, and a sentence or two of commentary. As a bonus to LTC Clippings subscribers, Steve will answer questions by phone or email usually within 24 hours. Hook yourself into this reliable source and you can safely spend less time scanning for information and more time doing what you do best professionally. Contact Damon at 206-283-7036 or damon@centerltc.com to subscribe or learn more. Two sample clippings from this week:
6/13/2019, “New Resource on Parkinson's Provides a Comprehensive Look at the Human and Economic Burden of the Disease,” Alliance for Aging Research
Quote: “The latest in the Silver Book® series, this factsheet features new data from a study commissioned by The Michael J. Fox Foundation and conducted by the Lewin Group. The study provides the most comprehensive assessment of the economic burden of Parkinson’s to date, nearly doubling previous estimates and for the first time, includes the various ways Parkinson’s affects a person’s finances and their ability to participate in the labor market. … You can find these, as well as additional statistics and sources, online at www.silverbook.org. This data will join the more than 3,000 facts and figures from more than 800 reliable references on a number of chronic diseases that disproportionately impact older Americans.”
LTC Comment: Excellent new source of data and analysis on Parkinson’s Disease.
6/2019, “Community Care For High-Need Patients,” by Alan R. Weil, Health Affairs
Quote: “Almost everyone wants to live in their own home and community as they age. Yet for many, later age brings frailty and the accumulation of chronic conditions. This month’s issue of Health Affairs examines how we can best provide care in the community for people with advanced illness.”
LTC Comment: The June issue of Health Affairs focuses on problems with home health care for the aging, including caregiver shortages and financing. This month’s issue has several “open access” articles of interest that you can read without paying for a subscription. Check them out, but be skeptical. As usual, Health Affairs’ predilection is to lament the LTC service delivery and financing systems’ shortcomings without analyzing their cause and to recommend more government spending to address them, ironically doubling down on the unexamined cause of the shortcomings itself. We’ll make this case in detail in a forthcoming LTC Bullet.
LTC BULLET: LTCI POOL OF MONEY CALCULATOR
LTC Comment: We received the following message from an old friend and colleague, Ralph Leisle, regarding an important product he developed and marketed. The good news is the LTCi Pool of Money Calculator is still/again available, newly under the auspices of LTC insurance expert Susan Blais.
We had this to say about software Ralph designed in an LTC Bullet 19 years ago: “By the way, when it comes to calculating the true risk and cost of long-term care, don't depend on the kind of ‘back-of-the-envelope’ analysis offered in the WSJ article. Rather, consult the extraordinary software developed by Ralph Leisle that we covered in ‘LTC Bullet: Handy New Tool,’ November 17, 2000, http://www.centerltc.com/bullets/archives2000/handy_tool.htm.”
We’re happy to honor Mr. Leisle’s retirement announcement by encouraging readers to review and consider this product of his career. Here’s the latest:
To: Former LTCi Pool of Money (POM) Subscribers From: Ralph Leisle, Retired President, LTCi Decision Systems, Inc.
Thank you for your past use or support of the LTCia Pool of Money (POM) software program!
As a former subscriber you know through experience that the LTC Pool of Money Calculator can be a great help in enhancing sales of long-term care insurance (“LTCi”). It does this by simply demonstrating the true value of LTCI: the money the client will have available when they’re most likely to need care. It also places the premium in relationship to the benefits available, both now and in the future, and shows the client the wisdom of purchasing insurance for this risk as opposed to investing their way out of the problem using their own savings.
As the proud creator of this program, I happily supported it for 15 years, and recently decided I’d like to retire. Susan Blais, a long-time expert in the long-term care field, took over ownership of the calculator as she didn’t want to see it retired as well. She has set the same calculator program into a simple website with enhancements like tutorial videos, and has reduced the monthly subscription from $14.95 to $9.95 per month.
One of the tutorials, on the Demos page, shows how useful the calculator is when helping existing clients determine the best renewal option when they get a premium increase at renewal. This use of the calculator alone is worth the price of admission, as it makes evaluating renewal options simple, and allows you to request additional options from the carrier to create just the right combo of benefits and premiums for your existing clients’ protection.
To check out the new website and the demos, go to this page: https://www.ltcpomcalculator.com/.
Thank you again for your support throughout the years, and I trust you will continue to help your clients obtain the essential protection offered by long-term care insurance. The risk isn’t going away, and the costs of care are not going down!
All my best, Ralph Leisle |