Worksite Long-Term Care Insurance: What Employers and Employees Need to Know with Marc Glickman

Ever wondered about long-term care insurance options through your employer? 🤔 Dive into the fastest-growing segment of LTC: the employer group market! 📈 Let's explore the exciting changes and options available! 

1🔍 Did you know that the employer group market is the fastest-growing segment of long-term care? From guaranteed issue solutions with dozens of carriers to small groups starting at 3 employees, the landscape is changing dramatically! #GroupLTC #InsuranceEvolution

2 🤝 Group vs. Worksite: What's the difference? Group policies mean no medical underwriting during special enrollment! Perfect for those wanting an easier path to coverage! #InsuranceExplained

3 🌟 Hybrid options leading the way: Most group market solutions have a long-term care focus with a life insurance extension. Oh, and restoration of the death benefit – get both LTC & life insurance benefits! #HybridInsuranceBenefits

4 💲 Cost-effective coverage: Long-term care benefits start as low as $15/month for younger employees and offer leverage that could cover millions over time. Think you can't afford it? Think again! #AffordableCare

5 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 It's all in the family: Some policies cover spouses and children too! With options to buy up coverage, you can match your needs as they change. #FamilyCare

6 🎓 Education is key: Employers offering LTC should consider timing outside general benefits enrollment and provide robust education resources. Knowledge empowers smart choices! #EducateToPlan

7 🕒 Timing is everything: Secure your benefits before policy windows close, and stay ahead of potential state mandates like payroll taxes on LTC. Seize the opportunity today! #PlanAhead #FutureSecure

For more insights, learn from experts like Kelly Augspurger and Marc Glickman. Their mission is simple: help you understand and choose the best LTC options. Stay tuned to see how this evolves! 🌟 

To learn more about Marc and Buddy Ins:

Go to buddyins.com/group for more information about group/worksite LTCi opportunities and to explore group products. 

Join Ask The Long Term Care Insurance Specialists Facebook group for LTCi product information and peer-to-peer networking.  

For employers interested in learning more about offering LTCi to their employees, visit Long Term Care Insurance As An Employee Benefit - BuddyIns.

Marc can be reached at marc@buddyins.com.

Kelly can be reached at kelly@steadfastagents.com. 

For additional information about Kelly, check her out on Linkedin or www.SteadfastAgents.com.

To explore your options for long-term care insurance, click here.

Steadfast Care Planning podcast is made possible by Steadfast Insurance LLC,
Certification in Long Term Care, and AMADA Senior Care.

Come back next time for more helpful guidance!

Transcript

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:02]:
Hi everyone. Welcome to Steadfast Care Planning where we plan for care to live well. I'm Kelly Augspurger, LTC insurance specialist and your guide. With me today is Marc Glickman, CEO and co-founder of Buddy Ins, a community of experts who are on a mission to help people understand their long-term care planning options. Marc is an actuary by trade as well as a speaker, author, and influencer on long-term care insurance. Marc, thanks so much for being here.

Marc Glickman [00:00:29]:
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Kelly. I'm a longtime listener, so I'm really excited to be on the show.

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:34]:
So glad to have you. Today we are going to be talking about long-term care insurance options through your employer and what kind of options might be available. So Marc, can we jump right in?

Marc Glickman [00:00:45]:
Yeah. You know, we started off on the individual side of the business and then we quickly realized over the last few years that the employer group market is actually the fastest growing segment of long-term care. So we've invested a lot of time and resources to help develop that marketplace. And now I'm excited to share that we have guaranteed issue long-term care solutions from probably a dozen different carriers, including for small groups down to 3 employees. So really exciting times in the long-term care insurance industry.

Kelly Augspurger [00:01:12]:
It is a booming market, right? It really is exciting over the last couple of years to see the changes that are happening that we didn't have, you know, definitely a decade ago. So Marc, tell us, we hear group insurance, we understand the idea of group. People get health insurance through their employer, but we also hear the term worksite. So tell us, is there a difference between group and worksite long-term care insurance and if so, what are the differences?

Marc Glickman [00:01:38]:
Great question. Worksite has to do with benefits offered through an employer. So most of the carriers that we work with are worksite carriers, meaning that you're working with employees, or business owners that are actively at work, generally 20 hours a week. That's the requirement for them to get a policy. Now, group means that it's filed with the department of insurance as a group product versus an individual product. From the perspective of the client, it really doesn't change their contract at all because all of the group products are fully portable and even turn into individual products as soon as you purchase them. So the reality is how it's filed doesn't impact you as the client. So we don't really think too much about that piece except for the fact that the group solutions have no medical underwriting during that special enrollment when you're first getting it through your employer.

Marc Glickman [00:02:24]:
And that's really where there's a big advantage to the individual market.

Kelly Augspurger [00:02:27]:
And we're going to be talking about more of those advantages and disadvantages in a little bit, you know, group versus individual products. But we do have a plethora of options available today. So excited to be talking about that. So Marc, tell us what kind of long-term care insurance options are available in the worksite space and what's most common?

Marc Glickman [00:02:45]:
So most of the options today are hybrid options, but they're hybrids in the sense that they're long-term care focused. Many of the hybrids in the group market, like the individual market, have a long-term care extension of benefits rider. And really what that's doing is after you've accelerated your death benefit, it's providing you extra leverage for long-term care. And it's long-term care primarily, life insurance secondarily. The other thing that the group market has very commonly is they call it the restoration of the death benefit. So even though you're accelerating your death benefit for long-term care, they actually give it back to you, they restore it. So you're getting both long-term care and life insurance, which creates again, even a more compelling value.

Marc Glickman [00:03:23]:
I believe that there's going to be at least a couple of carriers by the end of this year that also will have traditional long-term care on the group market as well. So it's not going to be limited to hybrids. But that being said, the hybrid market is most competitive and I expect those solutions to still be more popular.

Kelly Augspurger [00:03:38]:
Okay. It is really exciting. And that restoration of benefits, that's uncommon, at least in the individual market. We don't see solutions on the individual side do that anymore. So to see that in the group space, that's pretty exciting.

Marc Glickman [00:03:50]:
Yeah. I would say that there was a concept called restoration of benefits for long-term care on the individual side of the market, but this is actually restoring the death benefit. And normally you have to choose one or the other. In this case you're getting both. It's an "and", not an "or."

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:05]:
Which is definitely a bonus. So Marc, tell us how much in long-term care benefits are typically offered to employees in one of these plans. What can people expect?

Marc Glickman [00:04:14]:
So you can start off with like a little plan, like a starter plan. And those are great because they're quick and easy to access, low cost. You can get them in 5 minutes because of the guaranteed issue. You're instantly approved. And usually we'll start off with $1,000 a month long-term care, which is about a $50,000 pool of long-term care. So $1,000 over 50 months. Then we can go up to guaranteed issue limits from some carriers.

Marc Glickman [00:04:36]:
That goes up to like I would say $8,000 a month is probably the top end and you'll get like $200,000 of death benefit which is $400,000 of long-term care. So again they're somewhat limited more because they don't have inflation protection on most of the products. But the monthly benefits actually you can get guaranteed issue at pretty healthy amounts. Some carriers then will go beyond that and let you buy up with simplified underwriting, meaning only like 5 to 10 medical questions and they'll let you get upwards of $20,000 a month or you know, $1 million of long-term care over 50 months. And now there's one carrier that's pretty new that has added a 5% compound inflation rider to their product. For those of you that know 5% compounding, it does increase very quickly. And because there's such a long period of time before you use the benefits, that 5% compounding is really even creating higher benefit pools. We're seeing million and a half, $2 million of coverage.

Marc Glickman [00:05:27]:
The group market isn't just a starter plan anymore, although most people will buy it that way at younger ages. We are seeing people buying more comprehensive coverage now as well.

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:36]:
I'm really interested and excited to hear about the inflation options in group because that is something that, if you are a 40 year-old person and you're buying LTC coverage and you don't have growth over 30, 40 plus years, come claim time, that's not really going to do a whole lot. So having that inflation protection option is definitely really valuable for the employee and their family.

Marc Glickman [00:05:57]:
Yeah, well, the other big issue is that on the group side we're able to educate thousands of people, through webinars endorsed by their employer. We also have some associations that offer this to their members. As long as they're actively at work, they don't have to be employees of the association. So what we're able to do is get them access to education and planning first, which as you know is half of the battle is getting people to want to plan. And then sometimes they're starting off with a small plan as kind of a beginning to get to a smaller price point to get familiar with the product. But then you can supplement that with individual coverage. So it's not where you start, it's where you finish with the planning process. But because 90% of people don't have any long-term care, even getting them $1,000 a month and education is a big win because they're more likely to get more comprehensive coverage later.

Kelly Augspurger [00:06:42]:
That's right. And just like with other group products that people have, they might get some group life insurance, but then they go out and buy their own individual solution that they can have in order to layer on top of their group. So that combination can really be helpful and a good combination of having both to protect that employee and their family. So yeah, it doesn't have to be one or the other. It definitely can be both. And both are beneficial.

Kelly Augspurger [00:07:05]:
They just operate a little bit differently, as far as the underwriting goes and what kind of options and customizations that are available. So both are good.

Marc Glickman [00:07:13]:
One of the nice things about coupling these together is you have a group solution that you can buy up with simplified issue coverage. On the group side, if you apply for the simplified issue and you don't qualify, the worst case scenario is they just roll you back to the maximum guaranteed issue and you don't get declined. So that's a much more soft landing. On the individual side, it's always sad to go back to a client and say, "Sorry, you're not able to get anything at all." At least in this case you're getting a smaller amount, but you're not left with nothing.

Kelly Augspurger [00:07:38]:
Right. And for those who are maybe not as familiar with how underwriting goes in long-term care insurance, what Marc is saying is in the group worksite world, underwriting is much more lenient as opposed to if you go through an individual route and want an individual product, the underwriting is going to take longer, it's going to be more strict, and depending what company you go with and what kind of solution will dictate what that underwriting looks like. But if someone that you know, or you, have multiple health issues and you know you're battling multiple conditions and have comorbidities, a group solution might be a really good fit for you.

Marc Glickman [00:08:13]:
Absolutely. Now the carriers are designing these to offer to a large group of people. So it's not just for people that have pre-existing conditions. It has to be combined with a good spread of risk from the carrier's perspective. But because employers are willing to offer this as a benefit because there's a lot of value to having it as an employer of choice and the labor market is pretty tight, there's a lot of good reasons why employers will sponsor this either on a voluntary basis, meaning that the employees actually pay out of their paycheck, or pay direct bill, or they actually fund this now quite a bit. Meaning that you can as an employer pay for a small starter plan for all your employees. And we're educating them on the value of keeping this policy, but they're also valued as the employer of choice. So we see a lot of small businesses taking advantage of that and then letting the employees choose to buy up out of their own paycheck as much as they'd like.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:02]:
Is that what you're seeing most commonly, Marc, is where the employer is doing a starter plan and then the employees are buying up as opposed to just voluntary?

Marc Glickman [00:09:11]:
Yeah, I think for large groups voluntary is more common just because you can get a lot of good offers from the insurance companies and even if participation is lower, you're still getting a lot more people coverage. I would say a large group is probably like a thousand plus.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:24]:
Okay.

Marc Glickman [00:09:25]:
But most employers in the United states are under 1,000. And so therefore that solution of buying like even a carve out, meaning that maybe you're just offering it to key employees and letting everyone else have access to it on a voluntary basis. That is a very popular solution for groups that are under 1,000.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:41]:
And that's a great point. Because we can discriminate with long-term care insurance. You don't have to offer it to every single employee.

Marc Glickman [00:09:48]:
Right.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:48]:
You can just choose a select group of employees, those executives, in order to offer this benefit. Which is not typical in that group space.

Marc Glickman [00:09:57]:
Correct. And that also gives us a lot of flexibility to customize the solution for each group. Because the one thing I've learned about long-term care is it's not cookie cutter. Everybody's long-term care story is unique and everybody's long-term care product that they want may be unique. So you can actually custom design it for that employer group and then give everyone access to buy up based on their own situation, their own budget, what they want to purchase.

Kelly Augspurger [00:10:19]:
The Steadfast Care Planning podcast is sponsored by AMADA Senior Care. AMADA provides complimentary consultation with a senior care advisor to find the right care from in-home caregiving to community care as well as long-term care insurance claim advocacy and unique support partnerships for financial advisors to address family transitions and generational retention. To learn more, visit www. SteadfastWithAmada.com. What do you typically see for elimination periods, Marc? So for people that don't know what that is, this is the waiting period, the amount of time that you're self-funding your care expenses until benefits begin. So what is most common in the worksite space for EP's.

Marc Glickman [00:11:03]:
Most common is a 90 day elimination, similar to on the individual side. And the most common payment structure is actually an indemnity type of payout. So you're not submitting receipts, you're getting the full monthly amount as soon as you use qualified services. So from the contract perspective, when we read all the carriers contracts, they're designed similar to what you see in the individual market. But of course, every carrier and product has nuances.

Kelly Augspurger [00:11:24]:
Right. Are you seeing that most of these solutions have care coordination, home modifications, caregiver training, respite care, bed reservation, you know, all these other benefits that we love in the individual market.

Marc Glickman [00:11:36]:
I would say, not as common, but because they pay out indemnity style, you can use the cash for whatever you want as long as you're getting some level of qualified service, but not during the 90 day elimination. Some of the individual products might give you something during the waiting period. The other thing that they're starting to have, though, we saw one of the big carriers announce this, is they're starting to offer caregiving solutions within the product by bundling something like a family caregiver concierge. You can use it day zero, day one. So there's newer, I'll call it benefits, that are emerging, but maybe not specifically the ones that you mentioned that are on the individual side.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:10]:
Okay. And those are extremely valuable to the family at claim time, or when care is needed, or there's a transition of care, having somebody to hold their hand and walk them through, "Okay, here's how we can best support you as a caregiver." These are things to consider. Because we know there's a huge caregiver burnout and there are what, over 50 million caregivers in the United States.

Marc Glickman [00:12:28]:
Right, exactly. And I will say this, most people that are buying this on a voluntary basis probably have had a caregiving experience. So one thing these products allow you to do is not only get the family caregiving benefit for you when you need it, which might be far into the future, but also if you're currently at caregiving, they allow you to extend that to you as a family caregiver to take care of your parents. So you might get benefits from the policy on day one just because of that caregiver benefit.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:53]:
So helpful. Yeah, if we can help to reduce stress and save that burnout, that's going to be tremendously helpful for the caregiver and their entire family. Because we know what that looks like when there's not a plan and you don't have the support system in place. So those are great kind of extra benefits that we're seeing in these solutions. Marc, what about cost? I know it depends on how much coverage someone buys,

Kelly Augspurger [00:13:15]:
what that looks like. I know there are lots of different options, but can you give us some idea? Depending on the particular size of an employer and depending on the amount of benefits chosen, what can an employer and employee expect to pay for coverage?

Marc Glickman [00:13:30]:
So we look at it kind of on a per employee per month basis.

Kelly Augspurger [00:13:34]:
Great.

Marc Glickman [00:13:34]:
And usually you can get in at a lower starting price because you can buy down to lower benefits than you would on the individual side. So for that a month, a $50,000 of pool of coverage, that might cost as low as like $15 per month per employee for a younger employee and for an older employee, maybe that would cost, you know, $50 to $100 a month. So there's a range more based on your age. But once you purchase it, it's based on your original age and the premiums are designed to be guaranteed level for life.

Kelly Augspurger [00:14:03]:
Great.

Marc Glickman [00:14:04]:
You're actually locking in that rate. It's designed to be portable. So you take it with you into retirement and that rate never changes. So from that perspective, you can design pretty affordable starter plans. And then on the high end side, and we can kind of show a screen share and show kind of our calculator, so you can see the leverage. We're typically seeing leverage for the total insurance benefits that it's comparable to the individual market, if you compare products with no inflation to no inflation.

Kelly Augspurger [00:14:28]:
Okay, yeah, let's do that. Let's share your screen and let's take a look at an example. I think this will be really eye-opening to people.

Marc Glickman [00:14:35]:
Okay, so we're looking at here is a calculator and we can also offer this to folks in the audience that would like to embed this during their enrollments, or onto their webpages. The concept of this is one carrier, Allstate Benefits, that has a product...We'll also look at their product with inflation. Because you asked about inflation, we can look at that too. And we'll assume that the employee is 45. The average age of the employees purchasing this are about 10 to 15 years younger than on the individual market. So 45, 45 years-old is a pretty common age. But we see anywhere from ages 20 buying this all the way up to age 70.

Marc Glickman [00:15:06]:
So you have a pretty wide range there, too.

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:08]:
Is that the max, Marc? Is there a certain cutoff for employers on who they can offer this to and then what's the minimum and maximum?

Marc Glickman [00:15:15]:
Most carriers won't go with guaranteed issue beyond age 70, issue age. But we do have carriers going up to age 80 even. And you can offer this to your spouse. And we've actually seen some of the carriers now have child riders where you can get this for your children as young as 15 days-old.

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:31]:
Oh my goodness.

Marc Glickman [00:15:33]:
A long-term care rider at 15 days-old. So there is quite a wide range there.

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:38]:
Yeah.

Marc Glickman [00:15:38]:
Okay, but we'll assume 45 and then we'll look at projecting this out to age 70 claim age just so we can see what's that total leverage that's provided by the insurance company. This employee is selecting $100,000 life insurance amount and the insurance company is going to accelerate that at $6,000 a month, 6% of the death benefit. Okay, so this is the monthly benefit at point of claim at age 70. They're also double this amount. So it's going to be a 17 month benefit initially, but it has that extension rider and it's going to extend that out to 34 months. So it's going to double it from 17 to 34 months and you're going to get another hundred thousand of death benefit. Because of that restoration of the death benefit we talked about earlier, you're actually going to get a total of $300,000 of total benefits here. So this plan would be $175 a month premium.

Marc Glickman [00:16:25]:
So again, it tends to be less expensive than your average monthly premium on the individual side. You'll pay it into it $52,000 until age 70 and then the premium's waived and your total benefits at age 70 would be $300,000 of long-term care or life insurance tax free coverage. So if you look at the leverage, for every dollar premium, you have 5.7 dollars of protection. This is also unisex priced, which means that females pay the same rate as males. And as you know, on the individual side, women tend to pay more because of longevity. They tend to utilize long-term care benefits more. So for women especially, they're getting even better value on the group side because of the unisex pricing.

Marc Glickman [00:17:02]:
Now if you don't use the long-term care benefits, your benefit turns into a life insurance. So you'll get $100,000 death benefit. So you're always going to get pretty much more than what you paid into it, when you think about that hybrid story. But because of the guaranteed issue and because of the fact that you're getting leverage for long-term care, Live, die, quit. You have that same model on the group side. Now that works really well. I'll show you this

Marc Glickman [00:17:23]:
with inflation now, this product is only available in California and Utah. With this 5% inflation that works in this particular way.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:31]:
Okay.

Marc Glickman [00:17:31]:
So just so you can kind of get a sense for it, the same product and you'll see we only went up a little bit on the price with 5%. We went from no inflation to 5% and we only added like $60 a month.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:41]:
That's shocking.

Marc Glickman [00:17:43]:
That's the part what makes it such a good value, right?

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:46]:
Yeah. Comparing to a traditional product or an individual product. If you add 5% inflation, that premium is going to go up a lot, a lot more than this.

Marc Glickman [00:17:54]:
That's right. Yeah. It would probably be 2 to 3 times more.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:58]:
Yeah, absolutely. This is incredible.

Marc Glickman [00:18:01]:
A 45 year-old going on claim at age 70. Now instead of $6,000, we have $19,000 a month. Instead of $300,000, remember it's $200,000 of long-term care and $100,000 of death benefit. That $200,000 grows to $645,000. and you get the $100,000 of life insurance on top of that. So your leverage just goes up. So now we're looking at scenarios where, you know, claim age 80, you're getting even more leverage because of that growth. And these are indemnity style benefits.

Marc Glickman [00:18:27]:
So for employers in California especially, because you can go down to 3, this is rivaling the amount of coverage and the value, or even better, than what you can see on the individual side now.

Kelly Augspurger [00:18:38]:
Yeah, this is really fantastic. Do you anticipate that inflation option being offered in other states soon other than California and Utah?

Marc Glickman [00:18:45]:
You know, this carrier is the first to market in the group side that we've seen with this inflation rider and they do offer it in about 8 states. But one of the things that we've seen for those other states is that increases the monthly benefit, but not the total pool. So you're getting a much shorter duration benefit period. In California and Utah, probably because the regulators required it, they charged a little bit more in the price, but they're also giving you that increase to the pool, which is what makes that value phenomenal. I don't necessarily expect to see it in other states at this time, but I do think that those in California and Utah should take advantage of this.

Kelly Augspurger [00:19:16]:
Yeah, this is really incredible. This amount of leverage for that amount of premium. Yeah. Okay, and this is for how many minimum of 3 employees, Marc?

Marc Glickman [00:19:26]:
Yeah. Again, each carrier is different in what their underwriting from a group site allows. Allstate will go down to 3 lives as long as you get at least six apps. And you might say, "How do you do that?" They actually will usually add-on an accident critical illness policy guaranteed issue, which is a much lower premium cost. So what we'll do for those groups is we'll buy for those 3 employees the long-term care plus a very low cost accident critical illness policy to get to 6.

Kelly Augspurger [00:19:50]:
Got it.

Marc Glickman [00:19:50]:
Once you get to 5 to 10 employees, you can do this as a standalone and just buy the long-term care. But we're recommending it in employer funded scenarios because we want to make sure we hit the minimum participation to allow us to get the guaranteed issue.

Kelly Augspurger [00:20:03]:
So, what are you seeing for most carriers as far as being the minimum participation?

Marc Glickman [00:20:08]:
You know, it's interesting for a couple of carriers they're doing small group plans. So Allstate, Transamerica and their worksite division is also doing down to 5 employees minimum. For a lot of the other carriers, they want to stick to the large group market, so they're requiring you to offer it to only groups that have at least 100 employees. So it really does vary. Each carrier is kind of focusing on niche market segments. Some carriers, as I mentioned earlier, also offer it for associations, meaning that you can get a bar association, or physicians, or dental association access for their members to these products. And because those groups tend to be larger,

Marc Glickman [00:20:43]:
a couple of thousand, maybe up to 10,000 in a particular state, they'll allow you to do voluntary long-term care with guaranteed issue to the members with the right marketing plan and enrollment platform. So really I would say there's probably a few different segments of the market that each carrier is targeting. Some are targeting only large group and then a couple of carriers are focusing now on small groups.

Kelly Augspurger [00:21:04]:
Okay, so whether you're small, you're medium, you're large, there's probably something out there.

Marc Glickman [00:21:10]:
Absolutely, yeah. And again, you might not have the inflation option, but pretty much in all states you can get a plan down to 3 to 5 employees with guaranteed issue.

Kelly Augspurger [00:21:20]:
The Steadfast Care Planning podcast is sponsored by the Certification for Long-Term Care, CLTC, an in-depth training program that gives financial advisors the education and tools they need to discuss extended care planning with their clients. Look for the CLTC designation when choosing an advisor. If you're looking to become a CLTC, enroll in their masterclass and enter "Kelly" in the coupon code field for $200 off. Let's talk through the advantages and disadvantages of a worksite solutions versus an individual. Now we already talked about underwriting, right? We know that underwriting is more lenient in a worksite solution that you could be guaranteed, or it's going to be simplified. We talked about the pricing, right? If employers are going to be paying part of that and the employee pays a difference, you're probably going to be coming out of pocket less as an employee. What about some other pros, cons, differences between the two?

Marc Glickman [00:22:13]:
Yeah, well, I would say the group solutions are oriented towards getting everyone a plan. So they're not going to necessarily be customizable to the individual level. Like you can't say this employee wants the extension rider and this employee doesn't want an extension rider. Pretty much everyone in the group has to have the same plan design. So on the individual side, the ability to customize the plan is an advantage. Also, you can typically get higher-end coverage on the individual side primarily because of the inflation rider, although we're starting to see that blur a little bit with the one I just showed you. But in most states, you're going to be looking at adding an individual supplemental coverage for a business owner on top of the group plan versus having the group plan deliver all of that benefit to them. So those are two big areas where I think individual products shine more.

Marc Glickman [00:22:55]:
Right now individual products will do better on tax, tax deductibility. So when you have traditional, or you have the separately identifiable premium, which we talk about in the biz, which is the amount you can deduct for long-term care for a business owner, that's an advantage right now on the individual side. But because these are worksite products, I expect those to start to come over to the group side. But currently it's usually post tax dollars, tax free benefits, not pre tax dollars for the funding and tax free benefits. So a little bit of a tax advantage you might find on the individual side. There's definitely pros and cons. And of course that's why you want to talk to Kelly, long-term care specialist, because she understands the marketplace and can help guide you in the right direction.

Kelly Augspurger [00:23:35]:
Appreciate that, Marc. What about timing for employers offering long-term care insurance solutions to all of their employees? What do you typically see as best? I would imagine not with everything else that they're offering. Is that true?

Marc Glickman [00:23:49]:
You know, everything with long-term care is about getting it as soon as you can. And there's a couple of reasons for that. The ones we know about Is your health can change, your employment status can change. If you don't take advantage of it now, you may not be able to get it later. That's probably the biggest disappointment we run into is people that waited, or that dropped their policy, or just missed that opportunity, that window. So these are guaranteed issued during a specific window. And if you have a pre-existing condition, or your health changes and you miss that window, you can't go back and get it later. The other reason, of course, is you're locking in rates based on your current age.

Marc Glickman [00:24:21]:
And the younger you are, the lower the rates are. So it's almost a better deal the sooner you purchase it. So we encourage employers just to enroll it as soon as they're comfortable and ready to do it, because everything tells us that the options today are as good as they're going to get for your group. You shouldn't wait for a better opportunity. Or you can always add more coverage, or change it later if you need to. So you have some optionality there in terms of like getting people's attention, which I think is what you're getting on the group side. If you enroll this during open enrollment and you put this on the shelf and employees are not educated about it, very few people will participate, or understand what they're getting. They're focused on their major medical coverage and changes there, and there's constant changes.

Marc Glickman [00:25:01]:
They're focused on their vision, their dental, their FSA benefits, all of those things. So the first time we enroll it, we prefer to roll it off-cycle because we get dedicated education and nobody gets distracted by everything else they have to learn about their other benefits. That being said, if it's the best time is to do it during the open enrollment. The only thing we ask is that we can do an educational webinar that's distinct from all the other benefits. And that's what allows people to have the education they need to make an informed decision.

Kelly Augspurger [00:25:28]:
How many of those do you suggest employers do, Marc? Like one webinar, but then multiple other touch points along the way, you know, multiple other emails.

Marc Glickman [00:25:36]:
Yeah, you know, it just depends on how easy it is for you to do a webinar. We specialize in doing webinars, so we will do as many webinars as the employer wants to do as long as we can get people into the room. You know, it's just very, very cost effective, like doing this podcast. We can just jump in and have a conversation. That's how we do webinars. But yes, usually it's coupled with like 4 to 6 emails for education, we build a landing page, like a website for the employers where their employees can go to self-educate, where they'll get recorded videos, where they'll get the recorded webinars, where they'll get that calculator. They can actually use the calculator to choose their amount of coverage.

Marc Glickman [00:26:09]:
Look at their own leverage numbers. They can meet one-to-one with a long-term care specialist during the enrollment. So they really have full access to everything they need. But you have to make sure that the employer understands how to make sure that employees are aware of those resources. So we'll plug into whatever the employer is using to educate their employees on benefits in general.

Kelly Augspurger [00:26:28]:
Okay. So long-term care insurance, most people are just unfamiliar with it, right? They don't understand how it works, why it's important. And that's why this educational process is so critical to it really being successful and for people to opt-in to actually wanting to buy it through their group, or even on an individual basis, too. We know that when working with a client one-on-one it is really important to have that educational process. So if you want it to be successful, make sure that that is a priority and that's going to happen. Marc, what about 2025, this year, you've given us a couple things that you think might happen later in the year, but give us more detail, or what's your vision? How do you see group options changing in the next year or so?

Marc Glickman [00:27:11]:
It's like a renaissance of long-term care going on right now, which is great to see because so many people are uninsured entirely. So we're seeing a new group carrier enter the market every couple of months. Right now we're seeing carriers enter with multiple products. A couple actually have two products now, long-term care in their worksite division. We're seeing traditional long-term care like I talked about earlier entering which is going to open up more tax deductibility for employer funded types of groups. So you have a lot more broad access and competition happening in the space. So I would expect it to continue to evolve and grow. The good news is that carriers aren't leaving the market and that was always the death knell for the older products.

Marc Glickman [00:27:49]:
As rate increases, carriers were leaving the market market, this new generation products actually has guaranteed premiums and guaranteed benefits. So a lot more stability built into it. And I expect that to kind of stand the test of time, that model. So we shall see I guess, as carriers are vying for your business, for market share, you know where they go. And I expect some frothiness, some irrationality happening too. Maybe the carriers don't fully understand what they're offering, but they're going to monitor it closely. And if they're getting too much concentration, you could see them pulling back in certain areas, too. So I would expect to see change.

Marc Glickman [00:28:20]:
Change, though, in this situation is good because we're kind of stagnant for like you said, probably like 10 to 15 years there were no real group products in the marketplace and all of a sudden we have over a dozen.

Kelly Augspurger [00:28:30]:
Yeah, right.

Marc Glickman [00:28:31]:
So all I can say is that's what's really making things exciting today. And I think the individual market is going to pick up because of the group market, too. Meaning that if you're educating thousands of employees, or association members on why long-term care planning is important, they're going to ask their advisor if they could shop the market for them and look at individual products. So you're going to see actually the individual market getting a lift because of just all of that awareness that's happening on the group side.

Kelly Augspurger [00:28:54]:
Which is fantastic for our entire country. If more people have plans for care and ways to protect their family and their finances, then everybody's going to be better off. The government, families, workplaces. So really it's a great lift for our entire country if more people are educated. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

Marc Glickman [00:29:13]:
And I'll say if you don't plan as an employer, as an employee, there is a lot of evidence that the government is going to force your hand. We saw that with the Washington State payroll tax.

Kelly Augspurger [00:29:22]:
Yeah.

Marc Glickman [00:29:23]:
And I don't think that momentum is going to change. It will happen slowly, but you're going to see other states talking about it if they pass legislation and then they allow an opt-out for private insurance, as Gretchen, our chief marketing officer would say, "Katie, bar the door." You're going to have a lot of people coming to you at the same time. So that's the one thing is get ahead of that. You don't want to be looking for insurance during when the fire sale is happening.

Kelly Augspurger [00:29:47]:
Right.

Marc Glickman [00:29:47]:
It's going to be harder to get access to the best products at that point. So prepare in advance of the government forcing you to do it because there's definitely a lot of incentives aligned to want to get them off of Medicaid planning, which of course costs all of us a lot of money in terms of taxpayer dollars.

Kelly Augspurger [00:30:03]:
Absolutely. And we're not able to stay in control of our care options. It's not ideal. So we want to avoid that much as possible, correct? Well, Marc, any final advice on what people can do, or how they can plan to live well?

Marc Glickman [00:30:16]:
The one thing I would say which hasn't changed is it's all about education and doing what's best for your clients. So what I would suggest is if you do have a client you're working with, or a business owner, bring them to Kelly. Don't be afraid, don't be shy, have that conversation. Like I said, you're not going to be disappointed with the outcomes if they're eligible for a group solution. Kelly and Buddy Ins, we work together to help clients and they're not going to leave you disappointed again because of that guaranteed issue. So just like I said, it sounds too good to be true. You're going to see this in the mainstream because it is here finally.

Marc Glickman [00:30:47]:
A great marketplace.

Kelly Augspurger [00:30:51]:
Great. And then Marc, where can people find more information about you and Buddy Ins?

Marc Glickman [00:30:55]:
Absolutely. If you want to learn more about us, go to our website, www.BuddyIns.com. there's a dedicated section on join Buddy Ins, the community that's on group. So you can actually use our tools where you can choose different carriers, different group sizes. They'll actually give you a recommendation right on our website and you can submit a group right there. So, let us know what we can do to help you. And like I said, we work with Kelly, so she can be an account manager and work with you directly as your long-term care specialist on the cases. You don't have to do it yourself.

Marc Glickman [00:31:23]:
You can partner with a team that's experienced in this market.

Kelly Augspurger [00:31:26]:
That's right. Well, Marc, thank you so much for your time and expertise today. I hope everyone learned a lot. It's a fascinating subject and as we've talked about, it's evolving, it's changing, and it's going to continue to. So really looking forward to seeing what those changes are in the future. Thanks so much, Marc. Have a great day.

Marc Glickman [00:31:42]:
Keep planning. Talk to you soon.