Speaker 1
Hello again everybody and welcome to your next chapter, a production of The Heights at Avery Heights, a one-of-a-kind senior living community centrally located near the most entertaining and historical spots in Connecticut. And by the way, it’s never too late to grow and enjoy new realms of the mind and heart. Your next chapter, well, we delve deep into topics that will improve the way that we think about aging, about senior living, and the retirement years.

Speaker 1
Along with Siobhan Mattingly, she is the Heights Senior Living Specialist. I’m Gary Byron. Good to see you, Siobhan.

Speaker 1
Good morning. Hey, good morning. How are you?

Speaker 1
I’m very good. We look at you. You look very nice.

Speaker 1
I try. No, you don’t. I think it comes natural to you.

Speaker 2
How was your week? It was good. It was good.

Speaker 2
You always say that. We’re planning. We’re planning for Memorial Day, actually, for our veterans.

Speaker 2
Oh, right, right. A little ceremony. We have a kid or young adult from Sedgwick that’s going to be doing taps for us.

Speaker 2
And our chaplain’s going to say a few words and our director.

Speaker 1
Is it similar to when I was there on Veterans Day? No. Is there something similar to that? No. Do you do a lunch or do you do a –

Speaker 2
Well, we’re going to do the ceremony. And then after the ceremony, we’ll have our social hours. So there will be family members there.

Speaker 2
It’ll be a bigger social hour. Yeah. I think it’s going to be nice, though, especially the taps part.

Speaker 2
That always gets to me.

Speaker 1
How many people do you think will attend this?

Speaker 2
We usually have. I mean, for happy hour, our social hour, we usually have about 60, 70 people. And then I’m sure, like, family members will come and so forth.

Speaker 2
So our veterans, you know, support is very strong, especially with the families. They love it. I can’t believe we have, like, now we have close to, like, 35 veterans.

Speaker 2
So it’s, yeah, yeah. We’re attracting more and more every day.

Speaker 1
Memorial Day, though, is always much more sad because it’s more memorializing, obviously. Exactly. You know, those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1
And it’s emotional. You could see it on the eye, you know, in the eyes of the veterans, you know, because they’ll recall somebody that they were close with who has since passed on either in active duty or or since maybe the last Memorial Day, you know.

Speaker 2
Yeah. And that’s why when I used to work for hospice, they used to do a lot of work with folks, with veterans as that because there’s a lot of shame and guilt as well because why did i get sent home why did i survive and so there’s a lot that goes on there uh towards the end uh because obviously

Speaker 1
you want people to resolve that and have a good quality death do people wear their uniform or or is that something that is part of their past they can no longer fit into yeah i don’t see even when

Speaker 2
we have because we have the veterans wall and every other month we do a ceremony for the veterans uh and their families there and so forth and we don’t have so far we haven’t had anyone that kind of dressed up for that. But we get a good turnout for that, too. We had 75 people at the last one.

Speaker 2
So basically, the person goes up on the veteran. Every other month, we put a different person up on the veteran’s wall. And whoever gets up there gets their bio done. They’re up there for two months. And then we do a ceremony for them with the family. So we have them say a few words. Bill says, our director says a few words. And then afterwards, everyone kind of goes up for dinner.

Speaker 2
Yeah. Very nice. It is very nice, actually. And some of these guys haven’t been acknowledged for their service in years. And so it’s very heartfelt. There’s tears always and stuff like that. And it’s,

Speaker 1
you know, it’s good. I mean, they served our country. Is this a large undertaking that you do every year? Or is this a lot of planning? For Memorial Day, this is actually the first time I,

Speaker 2
I was there last year around Memorial Day, but this is the first time that I, because the veterans program, I got started back in last November, myself and the team. And so with the wall, That was the first piece of it. And so last year, I don’t believe they did really anything to acknowledge it, you know, because we just, you know, kicking off the veterans program. So this year will be the first year. But it’s, I mean, when you think about undertaking, it’s like, first of all, I love my job. So, and I love planning events. So it’s really not work. And this is something that is going to have strong meaning. So that adds to the, so I don’t really feel like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2
I feel like it’s something that needs to be done and something that, you know, we have to, you know. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we can’t just kind of, I mean, this is a tough time for a lot of our veterans.

Speaker 2
I mean, you know, we have a lot of times, too, people will have pictures of all their friends. Our last veteran that we acknowledged, he had a picture of himself with his crew. And it was probably at least, oh, my gosh, it had to be at least maybe 60 people in this picture.

Speaker 2
They’re all in uniform. They were all on the base. you know how many of those people are still alive so you know it’s not just you know I’m a veteran and people passed away I mean this is just like you know this is something that you know they’re older and these these were their friends and probably several of them have passed away we’re also doing stuff with honor flight as well that’s where you go down to DC it’s usually the World War II vets Vietnam and Korea at this point and they get to go down to DC and go to all those memorials They fly them down.

Speaker 2
They do a huge ceremony at the airport, and then they fly them down, like I said. Then they go down, and they get to see all the memorials. Then they have lunch, and then they do a ceremony, and then they have dinner, and then they come back, and sometimes they don’t come back.

Speaker 2
And then when they get back, they have another welcoming, almost like think about you coming when they get back. And so probably a couple of our veterans, maybe two or three of our veterans, are going to be going down to that, which is really exciting. Alan’s going to go.

Speaker 2
Oh, yeah. Yes, yeah. His birthday’s coming up in July.

Speaker 2
He’s going to be 100. Yeah. God bless him.

Speaker 2
So he’s excited. He’s going to go. And they get to go with like an escort, a family member.

Speaker 2
So we’re doing a lot with that, too. So we’re trying to really, I mean.

Speaker 1
You are busy.

Speaker 2
Our veterans are super important to us.

Speaker 1
I might not surprise that that’s a lot. Hey, I’m looking into our guests this morning. Yes. I’m pretty excited about this. Why don’t you take the liberty now to introduce her and how you guys became aware of one another?

Speaker 2
Yeah. So I’m always, when I’m thinking of what to do for this show, I’m always just online, kind of like search and search and searching. And one of the biggest questions that I get, and we talked about this in the previous because we’re doing this four-part series on financial services, paying for senior living community.

Speaker 2
And that is the biggest question that I get. I mean probably even on the phone, first question in the tour, you know, what if, what if, how do I pay for this? Well, the best thing that we always like to hear are two things.

Speaker 2
One is veterans, which is going to be in our next part of the series. But the other one is they have a long-term care policy. When I hear that, I’m like, oh, like the lights come on.

Speaker 2
It’s like a moment. And so I really wanted to have Ms. Wendy Reinhardt on. She’s from Family Solutions for Care.

Speaker 2
And what they do is amazing to help people figure out these policies. And I think it’s really important to have her on. I know people have a ton of questions because even though you have the policy, there’s so much you need to know to kind of like get the benefits and so forth.

Speaker 2
So I just wanted to have her on so she can kind of help folks out.

Speaker 1
Well, good morning, Wendy. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3
Good morning. Very nice to be here.

Speaker 1
We appreciate your time.

Speaker 2
Very much appreciate you here.

Speaker 1
Family Solutions for Care. Well, before I ask you about Family Solutions for Care and what kind of services that your company provides, tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got into this industry and where you are now.

Speaker 3
Sure. Absolutely. Thank you.

Speaker 3
And Siobhan, like you, I love my job. I love serving families. And if I might add, my father is a veteran, a Korean War, Korean conflict veteran, and he wears his Army hat every single day.

Speaker 3
He unfortunately has advanced dementia, but every day he remembers his Army hat. So he’s very, very proud of his service. And Siobhan, you just gave me some great ideas for him for Monday.

Speaker 3
So thank you.

Speaker 2
Nice.

Speaker 3
I love it. My background is I came from a family, obviously, of service. I worked in the American Red Cross as the executive director, so I have a not-for-profit background.

Speaker 3
But out of the blue, someone called me to talk to me about selling long-term care insurance 25 years ago. And I thought about that for a minute, and I thought, well, as he described it, long-term care insurance sounded exciting because it would provide dignity and choices and peace of mind for families if they bought this policy, not to mention protecting all of their money. So I sold long-term care insurance for many years, and everything I do, I get passionate about it.

Speaker 3
So I got passionate about it because I believed I was giving people choices and dignity. And then many years into selling long-term care insurance, I started having families go on claim, including my brother. My brother developed terminal cancer, and when I called the insurance company to get his claim approved, I realized that they will pay. They pay claims. Insurance companies will absolutely pay, but it’s not a cakewalk, and it comes at a time when the family is emotionally often overwhelmed.

Speaker 3
There are a lot of moving parts. My brother was a young man. He died at 57 years old.

Speaker 3
And if I had not known the ropes, known the industry, we would not have been able to get his long-term care policy to pay. So I do want to go on record and say long-term care insurance pays. It’s just one kind of insurance that’s kind of counting on.

Speaker 3
It’s an emotionally unstable situation. So families don’t always realize everything that they’re up against when they’re trying to get their policies to pay. So what we do, and we started this over 12 years ago.

Speaker 3
Once we went through an experience with just a little frustration with the insurance company and my brother, we started a company that became nationwide within our first month of being in business. So families are referred to us from all over, from a lot of communities, also from some people that work in the placement space, elder law attorneys. They refer us families that have long-term care insurance, and we spend time with every single family, which is quite a bit of people are referred to us every month.

Speaker 3
We spend a long time talking with them about what’s going on health-wise with the policyholder. And then we ask them questions about their long-term care policy, or they send us a copy of their long-term care policy, or we call their insurance company together to ask questions about their long-term care policy. So our goal is to help a family get to the starting line, to help them understand exactly what is in their long-term care policy, exactly how their current health situation of the policyholder is going to affect the claim, and what exact steps they need to take in order to get every single dollar that the policyholder is entitled to.

Speaker 3
Or sometimes our conversation is telling the family that it’s not quite time to file a claim. So our goal, our mission is to get them to the starting line so they’re not making financial decisions that are going to later on hurt them. if they are unprepared.

Speaker 1
Sounds like you’re a guide in a way, an advisor or a guide.

Speaker 3
You absolutely are a guide. Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 3
I think that’s a perfect term for it. Here’s the problem, or here’s the challenge. I hate to really call it a problem because I still love long-term care insurance, but there are 400,000 varieties of these long-term care policies on the market.

Speaker 3
So there used to be. So it’s complicated. There used to be 200 companies that sold these long-term care insurance policies.

Speaker 3
Now, the industry has really transitioned. And so the number of insurance companies that sell long-term care insurance is now less than 10. And that’s not a bad thing.

Speaker 3
It’s just there’s been sort of a straightening out of the industry. It used to be that there were primarily people would buy reimbursement policies, which were the old-fashioned kinds of long-term care insurance contracts where you would pay for an expense and then they would reimburse you. Over somewhere between 10 and 12 million of those policies have been sold.

Speaker 3
But over the years, the industry has changed. So many of the big carriers got out of the long-term care market. John Hancock, Genworth, which was GE, which was Amex.

Speaker 3
A lot of transitions. A lot of these big carriers got out of the traditional long-term care market. After 2008, the industry wasn’t quite as profitable as they thought it would be.

Speaker 3
People lived longer. People were going on claim longer. And people didn’t drop their long-term care policies.

Speaker 3
So a lot of the insurance companies said, okay, I don’t know if we can afford to sell it. sell these same products anymore. So now what’s happened is now there are a few companies that offer traditional policies, and I think the industry has gotten it right in terms of pricing.

Speaker 3
They have a lot more actuarial data. But we also are seeing a lot of hybrid policies. So those are annuity-type products where people would pay in a chunk of money, and they can use it for life insurance.

Speaker 3
They can use it for long-term care, either an annuity or a life insurance policy. They work very similarly to traditional long-term care policies. You have to meet the same kind of criteria in order to get them to pay.

Speaker 3
But a lot of people like these hybrid-type products because they get to use the benefits one way or another, either for life insurance or for a long-term care event.

Speaker 2
I think they’re more affordable, too. Sorry. That’s right. Go ahead. Right, Wendy, they’re more affordable that way?

Speaker 3
Yes, they are a lot more affordable this way. And again, it depends on which policy you go with. You still can buy high-end policies that are more expensive, but you can buy traditional policies with a life insurance rider. They’re actually life insurance policies with a long-term care rider, to be fair.

Speaker 1
I’m just curious as to the different types of policies, because I don’t need you to go over $400,000. But what are the more? I know, right?

Speaker 1
We’ll continue this every morning for the next decade. Oh, yeah, really? But, I mean, there’s got to be more popular policies that people gravitate more towards.

Speaker 1
What does it entail? What different types of policies are out there for people?

Speaker 3
I’m going to talk about the traditional policies and how they work. So that’s the most common thing. And there are some commonalities between these policies, even though there’s 400,000 variations of them.

Speaker 3
So a few things. Most policies have elimination periods or waiting periods. So this is whether it’s on a traditional policy or on a hybrid policy.

Speaker 3
So elimination periods are sometimes they’re 30 days, sometimes they’re 90 days, sometimes they’re 100 days. You can think of these as waiting periods. So this is a waiting period or a time when the insurance company expects either you or Medicare or health insurance to pay up front.

Speaker 3
And actually, these policies were designed so that these waiting periods were, in fact, covered a great deal by Medicare. So oftentimes, and this is something I’d like people to understand, if you have an elimination period on your long-term care policy and you have had care recently, maybe in the form of rehab care or OT or PT or speech therapy, that therapy or those rehab days probably can be counted towards your elimination period. So understanding elimination periods is a huge part of understanding how to get your long-term care policy to work.

Speaker 3
And then some of the commonalities in terms of benefit triggers are most policies, and I will be fair about this, most policies say we will start paying benefits once you need assistance with two out of six activities of daily living. Now, that list of six is bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, continence, and eating. Now, what I want to point out is that list of activities of daily living is not the same with every single policy.

Speaker 3
But it is a uniform list for a lot of policies, probably 80% of the market. Now, here’s the interpretation difference in what we talk with families about. Some policies will pay once you need just a little bit of supervision.

Speaker 3
It’s called standby assistance. So a lot of people think they have to wait until they are completely incapacitated to utilize their long-term care policies. But if your policy says it will pay once you need standby assistance, that means that you can activate the policy sooner and actually use the policy the way that it was designed, which is to provide dignity, provide choice, give you peace of mind, protect your assets.

Speaker 3
So standby assistance means that you’re still doing your things. You still can bathe. You still can toilet.

Speaker 3
You still can dress yourself. But gosh, it would be better for you if you had someone near you so that you could call out for help in case you get in trouble. And it could be simple things like dressing could be someone needs help putting their compression hose on.

Speaker 3
Or they just need help when they go out to put their shoes and socks on. So standby assistance is a huge differentiator between a policy that pays for only hands-on assistance. There are policies that pay for only hands-on assistance, and those, to be fair, are a little more restrictive.

Speaker 3
So if someone is looking at buying a long-term care policy in the future, you want a policy that uses the two out of six activities of daily living criteria, and you want a policy policy that defines assistance as stand by. And I hope that made sense.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Folks, you’re listening to your next chapter, a production of The Heights at Avery Heights, along with Siobhan Mattingly.

Speaker 1
I’m Gary Byron. Our guest this morning, Wendy Reinhardt from Family Solutions for Care. She’s a co-owner, co-founder.

Speaker 1
Check them out online at familysolutionsforcare.com. And I’m going to give you her number and I’ll repeat that website more towards the end of the show. I’m curious because we’ve only got a few minutes left.

Speaker 1
And one of the questions that I had really kind of from the get go is how this all works. How does long term care insurance, how does it work? I mean, what’s the first step that you take?

Speaker 1
And really, what are the questions that somebody should be asking someone like you?

Speaker 3
Well, the first thing they would, you know, obviously we would like them to call us, and we do have a toll-free number of 844-858-4500 so that we can help them understand what they’ve got in a policy. What we’ve learned is that the first thing that happens is, for instance, in my father’s case, my father had a health issue, we immediately had to make a decision, and he was placed into a facility pretty quickly. And we find that that is fairly common.

Speaker 3
People don’t always have the luxury of planning for their move-in. So oftentimes we get families calling us that have already moved in because there’s already been a health care event that has changed. But whether they’ve already moved in or they’re considering moving in, call us.

Speaker 3
We honestly, we will help you figure out when the right time to file a claim is, whether or not this is the right time to file a claim. We talk to a lot of families, and once we explain to them, You need to be asking for and receiving help with your activities of daily living. Once we walk through that with that policyholder and their family, they oftentimes make a decision about whether or not they want to use the policy.

Speaker 3
So the key is, number one, never file a claim with a long-term care policy unless you have a full copy of your long-term care policy. So again, never file a claim unless you have a complete copy of your long-term care policy because otherwise you are shooting yourself in the foot. And I would recommend not even calling the claim department of the insurance company until you have a copy of your long-term care policy, which means if you don’t call us and let us help you, then at the very least call the customer service department of the insurance company and ask for a copy of your policy before you file a claim.

Speaker 3
But when you think at all that you’re going to have a claim, you’ve got to get a copy of the policy. And you have to sit down and think about, are you ready and willing to accept help with your activities of daily living? And sometimes those activities of daily living are defined very harshly in the hands-on help.

Speaker 3
And sometimes, again, like I said earlier, with standby assistance, we can activate these policies more quickly. And let me share with you that the policies can pay in assisted living. They can pay for room and board.

Speaker 3
They can pay for meal preparation and laundry service and medication management. So in any setting, these policies are generally pretty broad. They will pay for a little socialization, doctor’s appointments, informal care, as long as the policyholder themselves will accept consistent assistance with their activities of daily living.

Speaker 3
And they only have to meet the criteria for two of them. But when we are talking with them, when our team is talking with them, we can help them ascertain whether or not they’re even close to being able to access a claim. But more often than not, we encourage them to use their policies.

Speaker 3
People often think they need to wait for an absolute rainy day and don’t want to use their policies too soon. One thing I will tell you is that most policies do not have a time limit cap. They have a cap in terms of total benefit dollars.

Speaker 1
All right.

Speaker 3
So they’re not capped at three or four years. They’re capped at how much money is in their benefit pool.

Speaker 1
So for folks who don’t have a policy, number one, how can they get one? Number two, what age should you have a policy in place by?

Speaker 3
Excellent question. Most people buy policies between the ages of 45 and 70 currently. You have to be relatively healthy to buy traditional long-term care insurance.

Speaker 3
Now, we have seen there are carriers that, of course, sell policies for people that are older than 70, but oftentimes, but in our 60s and 70s, we develop health issues that prohibit us from buying long-term care insurance. But that is where the underwriting for life insurance products with a long-term care writer is slightly easier. So I would recommend if you’re 65 to 70 or older, maybe consider looking at a life insurance policy with a long-term care writer.

Speaker 3
They tend to have better, a little easier underwriting.

Speaker 1
You know, I’m running out of time. I’ve got about three minutes remaining, but there’s one important question that I wanted to ask you before we let you go. And it really just comes down to offering maybe some tips, some buyer beware tips, some advice for people who are looking to buy long-term care insurance.

Speaker 1
Maybe you can take both those on in the next two and a half to three minutes. What are some advice that you can give? And what are some buyer beware scams or tips that you can?

Speaker 3
Absolutely. So the first thing I would say is shop reputable companies. Make sure that you’re dealing with a company that has an A rating.

Speaker 3
Make sure that it’s a large enough company. It’s not a one-off company that’s just offering this as an aside. Since we’ve been helping families with claims for the last 12 years, these smaller one-off companies are just not as structured, and it’s a little more problematic.

Speaker 3
So reputable company. Number two is make sure that the policy will pay for standby assistance, and it does not require someone to be completely incapacitated before you use it. And number three, if you can get it, if you can find it, indemnity or cash policies are much easier to access the benefit dollars from.

Speaker 3
And indemnity means that you’re going to get your benefit dollars even if you don’t spend that full amount of money on care. And all you have to do is prove eligibility. You don’t have to prove that you paid someone.

Speaker 3
So they’re just a little easier to work with. So indemnity is the key word to look for.

Speaker 1
All right. Wow. I want to give your information out again, Wendy. It’s familysolutionsforcare.com. And your toll-free number, is it 888-858-4500?

Speaker 3
Sorry, it’s 844-858-4500.

Speaker 1
844. Pardon me. 844-858-4500.

Speaker 1
Perfect. And familysolutionsforcare.com. Let me give you some information as far as Avery Heights and Siobhan.

Speaker 1
You can always get more information from Siobhan. You can get more information on the website for Avery Heights. It’s simply averyheights.org.

Speaker 1
Once again, averyheights.org. and you can call this phone number, 860-953-1201. That’s 860-953-1201.

Speaker 1
I want to thank our guest once again from Family Solutions for Care, Wendy Reinhart, for Siobhan Mattingly from Avery Heights. I’m Gary Byron. Thank you so much for listening to your next chapter.

Speaker 1
It is a production of Avery Heights Senior Living. Until next weekend, everybody, have a good one, everyone. So long.