Does your company offer a group long term care coverage policy? If not, you may want to consider purchasing LTC insurance on your own. It has been determined that baby boomers are vastly unprepared for the cost of long-term care coverage. This is due in part to the various planning aspects and retirement cost aspects. For the most part, baby boomers were not prepared for any type of long-term care. Many did not feel the need in creating a savings account for long-term care or for end-of-life care coverage. In fact, many of the baby boomer generation population feel that Social Security and other aspects would take care of themselves and, therefore, the cost of long-term care coverage would not be a issue. However, in recent years, the baby boomers have found that they are vastly unprepared for the cost of long-term care coverage and may need to work beyond their retirement years in order to pay for any kind of retirement living. There have been many studies in the past decade regarding the unpreparedness of baby boomers. Several employee benefit websites and benefit news sites have decided that by and large only 25% of baby boomers were prepared for any type of long-term care. This is left nearly 70% of baby boomers unprepared for the cost with no options insight. Because of this, many baby boomers are left with the only options being Medicare or some form of retirement plan. Unfortunately, many of the baby boomers who were not prepared for long-term care were also not prepared for retirement. A recent study appearing on Benefit News showed that an average age for long-term care policy issues was 43 in 2006. Unfortunately, in 2006, the average age of the baby boomer was 10 years older than the average age for individuals seeking long-term care policies. The same study also showed that women were representing 52% of the purchasing population and, of that 52%, only a small fraction were actually purchasing items that were retirement related or that were long-term care related. The top states that were purchasing long-term care insurance were California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, and Texas. Only two of these locations were considered to be baby boomer retirement areas. California and Florida also showed that though they were the top purchasers of long-term care insurance do individuals purchasing long-term care insurance were not part of the baby boomer environment. It has also been estimated that there has only been a 5% increase in the last decade of baby boomers actually purchasing long-term care insurance plans or major medical plans that will cover long-term care insurance. The statistics are staggering and have been catching many individuals off guard. In fact, there are many institutes of thought that show the baby boomers by and large are having to resort to alternative methods in order to pay for any type of long-term care insurance. One of these methods is to choose to go on Medicare even though Medicare may not cover the full extent of their long-term care. Other baby boomers have chosen to live with their children or have chosen to allow their children to have their children pay for their long-term care. This is becoming an increasingly disturbing issue. It has lead to many individuals to decide that retirement planning should be instilled in future generations in order to avoid a baby boomer generation occurring again with the high cost of long-term care.
