As our population ages, more and more services are needed, such as assisted living, nursing homes, and memory care. And there are many types of insurance available to help pay for these services, but shopping for them can be confusing. Mike Switzer interviews Caroline Edwards, a former BlueCross Medicare executive and currently the principal of Senior Savings Network insurance agency in North Charleston, SC.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. As our population ages, more and more services are needed such as assisted living, nursing homes, and memory care. And there are many types of insurances available to help pay for these services, but shopping for them can be confusing. Caroline Edwards is a former Blue Cross Medicare executive and currently the principal of Senior Savings Network Insurance agency in North Charleston, where she joins us from now by phone to help with this topic. Caroline, welcome to the program.
Edwards: Well, thanks, Mike. I'm a big fan of the program, so I'm excited to be on.
Switzer: Well, thank you so much for listening. So tell us about your company and why you decided to start this up.
Edwards: Yeah, so, the Senior Savings Network is designed to help people with Medicare. I, am a social worker and really saw a lot of folks basically going bankrupt because they didn't have proper health insurance. And that's the leading cause of bankruptcy for seniors. Just wanted to get on the other side to prevent financial devastation.
Switzer: All right, so tell us who, what type of mistakes you are seeing senior citizens make.
Edwards: I would say the three biggest mistakes. People assume they can self fund and receive the same benefits as a long term care plan. They don't realize that long term care insurance has become highly taxed advantaged and so your money goes further. I'm also seeing a mistake where people assume that Medicaid is going to be available to them and Medicaid's gonna offer them the same level of coverage and choice of providers that private insurance coverage does. And we're really concerned about it because of the budget reconciliation law of 2025 that's gonna cut Medicaid by over $900 billion in the next eight years.
Switzer: All right, now what did you mean by tax advantages of a long term care insurance policy?
Edwards: Long term care has tax deductible premiums, so you can deduct several thousand dollars off your taxes if you itemize or if you have a small business and tax free benefits and withdrawals. So if you use long term care, you actually don't pay taxes on those withdrawals when you're making them.
Switzer: All right, so share with us some other mistakes.
Edwards: Sure. So one of the issues is people wait too long to, to enroll in a plan and they are medically underwritten in most cases. So you can't actively need assistance with your activities of daily living like bathing or dressing and get coverage. Really with the new long term care plans, you can't outlive your benefits so you put the same, amount of money into the plan. As you would if you private paid for about a year, but you can then have benefits for 30 months or 30 years. So that's a big difference. Also, many of the plans give you a care planning manager, so you're not trying to interview a bunch of different providers. And your family isn't taking over bookkeeping and accounting and trying to be a lawyer at the same time.
Switzer: And so are you saying then that Medicare does not cover home health care or nursing home care or memory care?
Edwards: Medicare was never designed to provide any type of long term care. Hospice, benefits with Medicare are amazing and short term hospitalization coverage is great, but Medicare does not cover any portion of in home support on an ongoing basis or support of an assisted living center or a memory care center or nursing home. But 70% of people are gonna need long term care when they age. And the average woman needs almost four years of support to stay in her home or at the end of her life just to help her with activities of daily living.
Switzer: Okay, and so how about the competition amongst these different insurance companies? Are they all pretty much offering the same thing for the same price?
Edwards: No, there are different types of plans. There's some really unique features out there and benefits that depend on if they match your family's needs. Plans can be jointly written with you and your spouse so that you have a higher likelihood of using the benefit. Or plans can be use it or lose it. But then there's other plans where if you don't use any of the long term care benefit, it becomes a death benefit to your children. Public radio if you want it, but it's not a use it or lose it benefit.
Switzer: Well, Caroline, thank you so much for sharing this information.
Edwards: Well, thanks Mike. I appreciate it.
Switzer: Caroline Edwards is principal at Senior Savings Network Insurance Agency in North Charleston. Remember, you can hear the show again at our webpage, SouthCarolinaPublicRadio.org and you can hear us again wherever you find podcasts. With the South Carolina Business Review this is Mike Switzer.
The views expressed on the South Carolina Business Review do not necessarily reflect those of South Carolina Public Radio.
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