Ohio Partnership for Long-Term Care Insurance Offers Asset Protection

The new Ohio Partnership for Long-Term Care Insurance is an initiative between the State and private insurance com panies to encourage Ohioans to plan for their long-term care needs. The partnership established "partnership policies" which provide coverage for long-term care needs and also allows Ohioans the ability to obtain "Medicaid Asset Protection" - a benefit not available with traditional pre-existing policies sold in Ohio.

This benefit is only available to those who purchase "qualified partnership policies." Pre-existing policies, meaning those you may have now, do not qualify. Medicaid asset protection simply allows Medicaid applicants to keep more assets and still potentially qualify for Medicaid coverage. Upon application for Medicaid, the total assets a person may keep is the combined total of the Medicaid asset limit and the total amount paid by a partnership policy. In other words, the policy payments serve to protect other assets, such as your family home, even if the insurance benefits do not prove sufficient to pay the full cost of the nursing home care.

Partnership policyholders who need Medicaid to help pay for long-term care can apply at any time. Ohio's Medicaid program can help pay the difference between what the policy covers and what is owed, or provide assistance once the policy is exhausted. In both cases, the benefit of Medicaid asset protection will be provided. The more the partnership policy pays, the higher the asset protection.

A Dramatic Loss of Wealth: Seniors Scramble for Solutions

A recent study suggests that current economic woes affecting the value of real estate will strip most people of wealth, with the hardest hit being those currently poised to retire.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research extrapolated from data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance to project household wealth under three alternative scenarios. The first scenario assumes that real house prices fall no further than their level as of March 2008. The second scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 10 percent as a 2009 average. The third scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 20 percent for a 2009 average.

The projections show that the vast majority of families between the ages 49-54 will have little or no wealth by 2009 in any of these scenarios and that those persons who just be approaching retirement will have very little to support them-selves in retire-ment other than their Social Security.

The projections also show that a large number of families will have little or no equity in their homes by the end of 2008. Finally, the projections show that the renters within the same wealth categories in 2004 will have more wealth in 2009 than homeowners in all three scenarios.