LTC Bullet: History of LTC Insurance Conferences

Friday, November 22, 2019

Seattle—

LTC Comment: To anticipate and celebrate the 20th annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference, coming up late March, 2020 in Denver, we offer this history of that annual event, after the ***news.***

*** TODAY'S LTC BULLET is sponsored by Claude Thau, whose revolutionary “Range of Exposure” tool projects clients’ likelihood (joint for a couple) of spending $100,000; $250K; $500K or over $1,000,000 on LTC, based on their personal characteristics, and estimates how much of their cost in each range would be covered by various traditional or linked insurance designs. He also offers other ways to educate and help clients make informed final decisions in 15-20 minutes! Change work-site LTCi from a series of proposal deliveries to an interactive consultation! Claude is the lead author of Milliman’s annual Broker World LTCi Survey & a past Chair of the Center for Long-Term Care Financing. You can reach him at 913-403-5824 or claude.thau@gmail.com. ***

*** ILTCI NEWS: Organizers of the 2020 Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference, scheduled for Denver March 29 to April 1, invite you to check out their newly redesigned website at iltciconf.org. All details related to venue, dates, exhibitor/sponsor opportunities, and more can be found on the site. Registration launch is just around the. Here are some recent newsletter highlights:

Stay tuned! (ILTCInews.com) ***

*** THE ZONE: Most of what the Center for Long-Term Care Reform does and publishes is available to the public at our website: www.centerltc.com. But we also have a “members-only” website, nicknamed “The Zone,” where we archive our content of most interest to LTC insurance producers, distributors and carriers. Dues paying members of the Center have access to The Zone using their user name and password. Some of the content linked in the following history is only available in The Zone. That content includes many of the contemporaneous pictures of and interviews with attendees of the earliest meetings. They’re a hoot to see. If you’re not yet a member of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform nor have access to The Zone through our corporate members, please consider joining. We’ll have you in The Zone with access to all its content even before we receive your dues payment. To join or recover your UN and PW, contact Steve Moses at 425-891-3640 or smoses@centerltc.com. Thanks for your support. ***

 

LTC BULLET: HISTORY OF LTC INSURANCE CONFERENCES

LTC Comment: Consider today’s Bullet a tickler. We are preparing the full report described below for publication on the Center’s website, www.centerltc.com. For now, what you’ll find below is the report’s introduction and the highlights of each of the conferences it covers. As soon as the full report is posted, we’ll let you know.

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History of LTC Insurance Conferences

Background

We congratulate Jim Glickman and everyone associated with the Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference on the meeting’s 20th iteration, which will convene March 29 to April 1 in Denver, Colorado. To celebrate that exceptional achievement, we offer the following “History of LTC Insurance Conferences.”

The Society of Actuaries sponsored its first long-term care insurance conference in 2001. Representatives of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform (“Financing” at that time) attended. Starting with the third SOA-sponsored conference in 2003, we published detailed summaries of the annual events. What follows are the highlights (from our point of view) of all 19 SOA (later renamed the Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference) so far.

After these highlights, you’ll find more detailed summaries of each year’s convocation. At the end of each of those summaries will be a link to the even-more-detailed report(s) we published contemporaneously with the conferences. By homing in on the account of each event, we think you can patch together a pretty comprehensive history of private long-term care insurance and the political/economic context in which it evolved over the past two decades.

While this history mostly covers the Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conferences, we intersperse, especially in the very early years, a few summaries we published of other LTCI conferences. These include the ironically named “Private Long-Term Care Insurance Conference” which ran for 17 years until ILTCI replaced it, after running concurrently for a couple years. “Ironically named” because it was co-sponsored by AARP and focused as much on public financing options as on private insurance. LTCI old-timers will also remember “The Forum,” an annual conference for producers sponsored by Greg Luque and the longer-running “LTCI Producers Summit,” sponsored by American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance president Jesse Slome.

[You will find that some of the links in this history lead to material in the Center for Long-Term Care Reform’s members-only website—The Zone. You will need your user name and password to access those materials. For a reminder of your UN and PW or to join the Center and receive a UN and PW, contact Steve Moses at 425-891-3640 or smoses@centerltc.com.]

Highlights 

2001, Miami, FL: ILTCI #1, which convened Jan. 21-23, 2001 at the Hyatt Regency in Miami, Florida, was a big success as documented in a Broker World article which reported: “John Hancock featured a guest celebrity, knuckleball pitcher Phil Niekro, signing baseballs for a line of fans stretching all the way out into the hallway. CHCS had perhaps the most unique hospitality suite. They created the illusion for each participant of an old age infirmity, such as smeared glasses to imitate cataracts, and then in true Florida style, let them try their luck at completing a punch card voter ballot with the correct answers to a delayed word recall test.” Steve Moses gave this talk: Long-Term Care's Race for Survival. Check out the picture below of George Sherman, long-time editor of the LTC News & Comment newsletter, who passed away later the same year, Sally Leimbach and Claude Thau.
Source: LTC Bullet: LTCI Conference Focuses on Industry, Wednesday, November 22, 2000

2002, Beverly Hills, CA: The conference convened January 27-30, 2002 at The Beverly Hilton. According to conference organizers: “A LONG, HARD LOOK at long-term care insurance reveals a product on the cusp of widespread acceptance. However, as LTCI has come of age, so too have the challenges facing insurers: the internet's effect on underwriting, claims practices, pricing assumptions, population eligibility, profitability management, and legislative initiatives, to name a few.” Oh boy, if we’d known then what we know now! Check out these pictures below: Ron and Curt Hagelman with Jim Glickman and the exhibit hall at the 2nd annual SOA ILTCI conference.
Source:
LTC Bullet: 2002 SOA LTC Insurance Conference Coming Up

2003, Las Vegas, NV: “After only three years in existence (previous meetings were in Miami in 2001 and Beverly Hills in 2002), the SOA-LTCI meeting now promotes itself as ‘The Premier Conference for the LTCI Industry.’ That's a verbal thumb in the eye of the other major industry meeting, which convenes February 12, 2003 in San Antonio, Texas: ‘The 16th Private Long Term Care Insurance Conference.’ This long-standing industry meeting was sponsored by a consortium of organizations, including AARP, ACLI, HIAA, and the Partnership for Long-Term Care.” Check out pictures below of Peter Goldstein, Jim Glickman, Marc Cohen, Barry Fisher and Phyllis Shelton at ILTCI #3.
Source: A Virtual Visit to the SOA-LTCI Conference in Las Vegas with many contemporaneous pictures of participants.

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We interrupt this summary of ILTCI conferences to bring you reviews of three other industry conferences that took place in 2003.

The 16th Private Long-Term Care Insurance Conference: "Shaping the Future." This meeting convened at the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas from February 12 to 14, 2003. The Private Long-Term Care Insurance Conference was the grand-daddy of industry meetings in the LTCI field. Some say its name is a misnomer, because this conference catered as much to advocates of government long-term care financing as to manufacturers and purveyors of private LTC insurance. People still complain about its 1993 conference in Baltimore (during an ice storm) when Congressman Pete Stark bashed long-term care insurance agents and insulted the industry in an over-the-top "keynote" address. Check out all the details including many contemporaneous pictures of LTCI’s leading lights in The Zone here.

Our second non-ILTCI conference to feature is the 5th Annual National Long-Term Care Forum, held in Las Vegas, May 2003. This Virtual Visit takes you there. According to organizer Greg Luque, President of G.J. Luque and Company, the producers of the Long-Term Care Forum: "We're in our eighth year. This is our fifth annual national LTC Forum. We consistently draw agents from over 40 states with 25 insurance carriers sponsoring the program. This year's attendance of 730, including 200 exhibitors, is a record for the Forum." Having attended several of the National Long-Term Care Forums and spoken at two, Center for Long-Term Care Financing [now Reform] President Steve Moses says "This is one of the premier professional training events for long-term care insurance producers. Its relatively low cost and high-quality content should make it goal for agents and brokers to seek to attain and maintain the highest proficiency in sales and substantive knowledge."

The third non-ILTCI conference we’ll mention is The National LTCi Producers Summit convened November 16-18, 2003 in the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel located at the corner of Bourbon Street and Canal in the French Quarter of New Orleans, LA. This Virtual Visit takes you there. Presented by LTCi Sales Strategies magazine, this 2½-day conference boasted a sold-out attendance of over 700 people, and featured 25 sessions, 50 LTC expert speakers, ample networking opportunities, over 100 exhibitors, cocktail receptions, breakfasts and lunches, the LTCI Sales Idol contest, the top 10 producers contest, and even optional sight-seeing tours. To read interviews with attendees and see their pictures, check out our Virtual Visit to this conference.

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Back to the ILTCI conferences:

2004, Houston, TX: According to our Virtual Visits here and here, over 700 of the movers and shakers of the long-term care insurance industry attended ILTCI #4. Here's a little sampling of scuttlebutt heard in the hallways: “A nationally well-known actuary said ‘Business is excellent, but it's not nearly as much fun as it used to be. We're helping companies to raise rates on in-place business and protect their blocks. I'd much rather be designing and pricing new products like in the good old days.” A long-term care producer with insight into the back-office aspects of the LTCi business opined that “This industry has seen some hard times, but the worst is behind us. Pricing is improving; public awareness is increasing; and the same promising demographics are still out there. Industry consolidation and belt tightening will prove to have been healthy and beneficial in the long run.” “Pollyannaish wishful thinking?,” I asked at the time. Now we know. Steve Moses made the case for private LTC financing while Dr. Judith Feder, then Professor and Dean of Public Policy at Georgetown University appealed for public financing in a session at the Fourth Annual Society of Actuaries Long-Term Care Insurance Conference in Houston, Texas on February 10, 2004.
Source: LTC E-Alert #4-008--SOA LTCI Embed--Report from the Front--Part I
Source: LTC E-Alert #4-009--SOA LTCI Embed--Report from the Front--Part II
Source:
LTC Bullet--Changing LTC Public Policy: Why-What-When?

2005, Orlando, FL: No fault of the organizers, but the fifth annual Society of Actuaries Long-Term Care Insurance Conference in Orlando, Florida got off to a frustrating start on January 23, 2005. Blame Mother Nature. Of the 800 registrants--a hugely successful turnout--less than half were present for the opening reception Sunday night. [All but 100 arrived later.] By Monday morning, the keynote speaker, Dr. Joseph Coughlin, Director of MIT's ‘Age Lab,’ was still unable to get out of snowbound Boston. Read all about it in LTC Bullet: Clueless in Orlando.

2006, Anaheim, CA: Attendees heard a report on the "Medicaid Commission’s” findings. Like most commissions, it achieved nothing of consequence. Steve Moses delivered a speech titled "What I Believe About Long-Term Care." The Center's Vice President for Administration, Damon Moses, circulated at the conference interviewing attendees. Interview Question: What effect do you think the new Deficit Reduction Act will have on the marketability of private long-term care insurance? Can you put a percentage on that? Check out our Virtual Visit for answers. The CEO Forum was the biggest draw of the conference. Everyone wants to hear what the big shots have to say about the LTCi industry. But every year, it turns out to be the same thing. The audience asks difficult, penetrating questions like: Why are sales going down when objective need for LTC insurance is going up? The CEOs then give long complicated answers which, when translated into simple straight-forward language mean: "The only thing we know for sure is that it isn't our fault."

2007, Dallas, TX: ILTCI #7 opened to a body blow from the New York Times: “Aged, Frail and Denied Care by Their Insurers,” by Charles Duhigg, March 26, 2007. We responded immediately. Read our response and more about this conference in our virtual visit titled LTC Bullet: Sucker Punched in Dallas, Tuesday, April 10, 2007.

2008, Jacksonville, FL: More than 800 long-term care insurance leaders met March 16-19 at the riverfront Hyatt Hotel in Jacksonville, Florida. The 8th Annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference achieved its customary high standard. Best of all, this year's meeting wasn't greeted by a fusillade of negative coverage in the national media. Maybe our return fire, correcting the more egregious shortcomings in past published attacks, is making a difference. A distinctive feature of this year’s conference was the presence, at the venue’s front door, of a small Airstream trailer emblazoned with the decals of companies sponsoring the Center for Long-Term Care Reform’s 2008 “National Long-Term Care Consciousness Tour.” Read all about it in LTC Bullet: The Jacksonville LTCI Conference. Enjoy this musical reminder of tour highlights.

2009, Reno, NV: The Silver Bullet of Long-Term Care again graced the entrance to the 9th Annual Inter-Company Long-Term Care Insurance Conference. We published one LTC Bullet and three LTC E-Alerts (here, here, and here) about the meeting. The first "break out" session I attended was called "Luck of the Draw: Where Will LTC/LTCI Be in 5, 10, 15 Years?" Industry leading lights Paul Forte of the Federal LTCi program, Malcolm Cheung of Prudential and Gary Jacobs of Universal American prognosticated about what lies ahead for LTC insurance. Live polling results:
Question: If you were the CEO of an LTCI insurer, which of the following would best represent your views on the LTCI line of business?Possible AnswersAudience Response
A. LTCI has excellent prospects for profitable growth; I will raise the stakes 52
B. LTCI has moderate prospects for profitable growth; I’ll call the bet (i.e., do just enough to stay in the game) 32
C. I don’t know what to do about LTCI; I’ll check the pot & see what happens 7
D. This hand has no real chance; I’m folding when it’s my turn to bet 
9

Such a positive response from an industry that's struggled to grow is encouraging. I was surprised by the level of optimism. [I wonder how the same people would answer the same question today.]

I delivered my conference remarks on the Actuarial Track, answering the question "Can LTCi Really Work?" Read what I said here.

2010, New Orleans: The Tenth Annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference opened in New Orleans on March 15, 2010. The Ides of March! An ominous day to begin the conference formerly known as the Society of Actuaries LTCI conference. Gail Sheehy keynoted the conference, but later dissed LTCI on NPR. Despite some very strong panelists speaking on behalf of logic, evidence and actuarial sanity (Steve Schoonveld of LifePlans; Malcolm Cheung of Prudential; and Al Schmitz of Milliman), everyone seemed to be bending over backwards to give CLASS the benefit of the (clearly overwhelming) doubt. Howard Gleckman of the Urban Institute represented the Obama Administration's latest talking points: "99.5% sure health insurance reform will pass and 100% sure it will include CLASS." We'll see. “I still hold out a 50/50 chance cooler heads and sound reasoning will prevail.” Well, in the end PPACA passed and it included CLASS, but I was right CLASS came to an ignominious end. Read our detailed session summaries here: LTC Bullet: LTCI Conference Wrap.

2011, Atlanta, GA: "Energize Our Industry" was the theme of The Eleventh Annual Intercompany Long Term Care Insurance Conference, which convened March 6 to 9, 2011 at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, Georgia. Four breakout sessions focused on the CLASS Act including Steve Moses and John Greene debating CLASS with Connie Harner and Rhonda Richards (AARP). Find summaries of all four CLASS sessions and several other sessions in our Virtual Visit to the conference here. During the lunch break on the second day, the 3in4 Need More campaign had a press conference to introduce the LTCI industry's answer to dairy's "Got Milk" message. Spotted at the 3in4 Need More event and throughout the ILTCI conference was Glenn Ruffenach of the Wall Street Journal. Maybe there's hope for some good publicity for LTCI now.

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Here’s another non-ILTCI conference to remember. The 9th LTC Insurance Producers Summit, held April 3-5, 2011 in Las Vegas, had the theme "Get Over It!" Get over lagging sales, disappearing carriers, premium increases, and bad publicity. Get over it and, one might add based on the content of the conference: Get On With It! Proceedings got underway with a standing-room-only crowd for the "3 in 4 Need More" campaign's second press conference. Cameron Truesdell, CEO of Long-Term Care Financial Partners, delivered the "Keynote Address." He pointed out the desperate need for responsible long-term care planning and insisted: It's up to us to make it happen.  Echoing a patriotic appeal, he asked "If not us, who? If not now, when?" Award ceremonies recognized people and companies who have contributed most to the LTC insurance market including the first annual "Long-Term Care Insurance Industry Lifetime Achievement Award" to Jesse R. Slome in recognition of his outstanding contributions (well deserved and overdue in LTC Bullets' opinion) and the first annual "Bright Idea" award by John Hancock to Jonas Roeser for the "3 in 4 Need More" campaign. For my detailed summaries of several sessions including a long interview of Bob Yee by Jesse Slome about then-prospects for the CLASS Act, check out our Virtual Visit to this conference.

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Back to the ILTCI conferences again:

2012, Las Vegas, NV: Day one opened with a keynote address by “futurologist” David Smith, who pooh-poohed the use of focus groups to learn what consumers want, citing Steve Jobs: “People don’t know what they want until you show them.” So much for the research value of asking people why they don’t buy LTC insurance. Jonas Roeser provided an update on the “3in4 Need More” campaign. Day two of the conference began with an excellent overview of the likely impact of health reform (“ObamaCare” to many) on long-term care. The last session I attended was a post-mortem on CLASS titled “Meeting the Needs that CLASS Intended,” moderated by Prudential’s Malcolm Cheung with presentations by Bob Yee, lately CLASS’s actuary; Yair Babab from the University of Illinois, Chicago; and Mark Meiners, the father of the LTC Partnership Program. For a full account of the conference’s highlight event, the “Clash of Titans” debate between Harley Gordon and Steve Moses, check out LTC Bullet: LTC Embed Report from the ILTCI Conference in Las Vegas.

2013, Dallas, TX: With Steve Moses unable to attend, we engaged LTCI producers to share their impressions of the conference: Sally Leimbach, Honey Leveen, Steve Forman and Claude Thau. Overall, the mood of the conference was one of optimism and motivation. Many conference attendees in Dallas expressed high satisfaction with the value of networking opportunities with industry professionals as well as the quality of educational content. Honey Leveen, the self-styled “Queen of LTCI,” said: “For marketing people like me, the SOA [ILTCI conference] is valuable. I gain insight into the LTCi product, its actuarial, underwriting, and other elements I would otherwise not learn about.” First-time ILTCI conference attendee, Stephen Forman, acknowledged challenges inherent to providing educational sessions that would appeal to such a diverse group of attendees: “How can you appeal to the interests of hundreds of individual attendees when scheduling so many diverse topics? You can’t. Overall, the workshops I attended were terrific, both in educational value and quality of presenters.” One aspect of the conference that caused a buzz was the keynote speaker, Frank Abagnale. Recognized as “one of the world’s most respected authorities on forgery, embezzlement and secure documents,” Mr. Abagnale engendered polarized reactions to his selection as keynote speaker; nevertheless, attendees raved about his presentation. Here’s Claude Thau’s take: “Frank Abagnale’s key-note presentation was excellent. It was an unexpected, yet strong, call for ethical behavior and training. BRAVO! We should show the DVD to our families, friends, associates and politicians.”
Source:
LTC Bullet:  Virtual Visit to the 13th Annual Intercompany LTCI Conference in Dallas, Texas

2014, Orlando, FL: The 14th Annual Inter-Company Long-Term Care Insurance Conference convened in Orlando, Florida at the Rosen Centre Hotel from March 16-19, 2014. Conference founder Jim Glickman said highlights included (1) over 900 attendees, an all-time record; (2) for the first time in several years there were attendees from multiple insurance companies not currently participating in the LTCi marketplace; and (3) also in attendance were several reinsurers not currently in the LTCi marketplace together with several representatives of the private equity world, apparently looking for new opportunities to consider. Two highlights we observed were a report on the “Land this Plane” project and a debate between Judith Feder and Mark Warshawsky. Pre-conference activities included Harley Gordon’s CLTC Master Class, always an important contribution to LTCI marketing and professionalism. For session details, read LTC Bullet:  LTC Embed Report from the Policy Front at ILTCI ’14 Orlando.

2015, Colorado Springs, CO: The 15th annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference convened March 22-25, 2015 at The Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The annual Inter-Company Long-Term Care Insurance Conferences are always something special. But this year’s meeting exceeded all that came before. It exceeded by breaking past records: over 1100 attendees, up from the 900s; 72 vendors, up from 56; 44 sponsors and 170 speakers. It exceeded by offering new programs including: demonstration rooms where exhibitors could make scheduled presentations; a “social media” room with Twitter feeds; a “future leaders” program; a new Sales and Distribution combination track; and a new “Alternative Solutions” track, honchoed by Eileen Tell and John O’Leary, which replaced Policy and Providers, and captured me for all seven break-out sessions on the agenda. (See the write-ups that follow.) It exceeded with an expanded and improved mobile app, which replaced the thick and awkward hard copy agenda of the past; and numerous drawings with excellent prizes. It exceeded by the venue (the five-star Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs) and the quality and variety of the free food and drink. It exceeded by raising over $5,000 for the USO. For details on conference sessions, read LTC Bullet:  The 15th Annual ILTCI Conference:  A Virtual Visit, Friday, March 27, 2015.

2016, San Antonio, TX: The 16th Annual Intercompany LTCI Conference convened at The Grand Hyatt in San Antonio, Texas, March 13th to 16th, 2016. This year’s keynote speaker, sponsored by Agent Review, was Ken Schmidt, brand visionary and former communications strategist for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. Two breakout sessions provided a review and summary of work recently reported by the SCAN Foundation, Leading Age, the LTC Collaborative, and the Bipartisan Policy Center, which work reached a consensus in favor of a new publicly financed LTC program covering the catastrophic back-end risk. In another session, Susan Coronel and Marc Cohen shared insights coming out of two important new studies, one of which looked at 25 years of buyer and nonbuyer research and general population surveys on LTCI. The other updated critical work on claimant satisfaction, needs, experiences and the role of insurance. The conference’s closing general session was It's Not Me, It's You; A Consumer View on LTCI. Behavioral economist Jeremy Pincus and consumer insight expert Luisa Uriarte delivered new information about how our current approach and sales and marketing techniques are actually standing in the way a broader appeal for long-term care insurance. For more on these highlights and other sessions at the conference, read LTC Bullet:  The 16th Annual Inter-Company Long-Term Care Insurance Conference:  A Virtual Visit.

2017, Jacksonville, FL: The 17th ILTCI conference convened March 26-29, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency in Jacksonville, Florida, with the theme “Navigating the Future.” This year’s keynote speaker, sponsored by Genworth, was Anat Baron, former head of Mike's Hard Lemonade, a change strategist and “disruptor.” Ms. Baron’s session was entertaining and interesting, but would have benefited from more effort to apply her observations and analysis to the LTC insurance business and its challenges. A perennial favorite ILTCI conference session was “Who Buys LTC Insurance?... Why? (or Why Not)?” with the latest findings and reflections from 25 years of quinquennial [occurring every five years] analyses of the subject. Presenters Marc Cohen, Susan Coronel, and Eileen Tell recounted and opined about “changes in the LTC insurance market from the consumer perspective, and an empirical basis for projecting future trends.” Other sessions included “Washington State Initiative,” “Finding LTSS: New Options or New Confusions for Consumers Alternative Solutions,” “A Public Private Partnership: Catastrophic Public and Front-End Private LTC Insurance,” “LTC Think Tank Innovations-Exploring Possibilities for Improving LTC Financing,” and a closing general session called “New President and Congress: Implications for Aging and LTC Finance.” See our session summaries and critiques in LTC Bullet: The 17th Annual Inter-Company Long-Term Care Insurance Conference: A Virtual Visit.

2018, Las Vegas, NV: The 18th Annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference was held March 18-21, 2018 at the Paris Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, NV. Attendance was high at over 1,000 attendees, 60+ exhibitors and nearly 40 sponsors. An ample 45+ breakout sessions covered a diverse array of topics. “A Matrix of Opportunities” was the tagline for this year’s conference and optimism filled the agenda. The conference opened with keynote speaker, Vinh Giang, a business person and magician. Examples of breakout sessions: The Case for Variable LTC Insurance; Consumer View of New Long Term Care Combination Products; Home as a Strategic Asset for Retirement and Long Term Care Needs; Return of the Jedi: Best Practices of the Masters; and Building YOUR Brand. The closing session was The Coming Revolution in Long Term Caregiving: The Future is Now! Speakers, Jeremy Pincus, PhD and Marjorie Skubic, PhD described the current technological advances in robotics and how they will fill the “caregiver void.” Read all about the conference in LTC Bullet:  Virtual Visit to the 18th Annual ILTCI Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

2019, Chicago, IL: The 19th Annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference, the biggest of its nearly two-decade history with the theme “Imagine the Possibilities,” convened at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Chicago, Illinois from March 24 to 27, 2019. Conference Director Peggy Hauser kicked off the proceedings by presenting the “ILTCI Recognition Award” to Steve Moses, president of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform. Carroll Golden announced the creation of a new organization she’ll lead, the NAIFA Limited & Extended Care Planning Center, intended to keep LTC issues at the forefront and to bring together LTCI producers and general financial advisors more effectively. Some of the breakout sessions we attended and reviewed in LTC Bullet: Virtual Visit to the 19th Annual ILTCI Conference included Medicare Advantage Expansion into Personal & LTSS; Demo - My Million Dollar Mom, about Ross Schriftman’s movie he wrote and produced about caring for his mother through her Alzheimer’s Disease; Become an LTCI Super Hero: Integrating Asset-Based into Traditional LTCI Presentation; State Initiatives for LTC Financing Reform; What’s up Doc? Geriatric Neurology and the Implications for LTC Insurance; Evidence-Based Nutrition for Healthier Futures; and Political Pundits Pontificate: The Political/Policy Environment in 2019. The Alzheimer's Association offered a closing session, the highlight of which was Tom Doyle, a member of the National Early-Stage Advisory Group (ESAG), speaking about his life coping with dementia. The conference closed with “Whirled News Tonight,” an improv show.

We turn now to more detailed summaries of each of the conferences highlighted above.

[You will find this content in the full report when posted.]