How We Chose the Best Long-Term Care Insurance Providers

Stand-alone long-term care coverage

Long-term care insurance is actually available in a few different forms. Traditional, stand-alone LTC coverage is the most common, although there are more recent hybrid policies that pair with another insurance product like life insurance. While we explored these hybrid policies, we focused our attention on stand-alone plans, since they are still the most widely used.

Available to all

We started with a list of 31 LTC insurers. To ensure our top picks’ relevance and accessibility, we required providers sell plans in at least 35 states and hold no special eligibility requirements. We also nixed any that didn’t underwrite their own policies, serving instead as middlemen for the policies of other insurers. The best long-term care provider is available to many people and meets all of its policyholders’ needs in-house.

Financial strength

An insurance company’s financial strength ratings are the best indicators of its ability to pay out on claims. Of the three largest independent ratings agencies, only A.M. Best rates strictly insurance. We strongly weighted these ratings, requiring a minimum grade of A- (“Excellent”). Then, because the Insurance Information Institute recommends getting ratings from at least two agencies, we also required one of the following: AA- (“Very Strong”) or higher from S&P Global or Aa (“High Quality”) or higher from Moody’s.

Benefit periods as short as two years

A long-term care policy’s benefit period is the length of time it will pay for care after you make a claim. Ideally, it lasts as long as you need care, but so-called “lifetime policies” are practically extinct today. Instead, most LTC policies offer a benefit period measured in years (although some use a “pool of money” model in which benefits are gradually subtracted from a lifetime amount with no set time period). The longer the benefit period, the more expensive the policy, sometimes prohibitively so. Because smaller policies can still be useful, potentially saving you from having to sell assets to pay for care, we required companies offer benefit periods as short as two years.

‘Waiver of Premium’ as a standard provision

With insurance types like auto or homeowners, you continue to pay premiums even when you’re collecting benefits. But long-term care insurance typically kicks in at a time when most people are on a fixed, limited income, and “waiver of premium” removes the burden of paying premiums once your claim is approved. It’s not standard with every policy, but it is a wise inclusion and one we wanted to see in all of our top picks.

‘Shared Care’ rider option

Shared Care enables couples to pool their coverage so that one person’s unused benefits are available to the other. “Shared Care saves couples money by letting them each buy shorter policies than they would otherwise buy separately,” explains Mickey Batsell, board member at National Insurance Marketing Executives. Partners can each purchase a shorter, more affordable benefit period (say three years) but keep their partner’s identical benefits on reserve should they end up needing them (allowing each the potential for six years of care). The risk: The first person to need care could exhaust the entire benefit. Still, the option of adding a Shared Care rider means greater flexibility and value, so we required our picks to include it as an option.