With Halloween a few days away, AIP Marketing Alliance wants to get you in the holiday spirit this week as some of your valued clients and prospects might be scared by the ghosts of long-term care visiting them from the past, present, and future.

The holiday season also tends to resurrect these stories about a family member, a friend, or even a co-worker who has experienced the physical and mental exhaustion caused by caring for a loved one with a long-term care illness or condition. In some situations, the battle seems never-ending between fighting to get better as well as “working” with the healthcare or assisted care facility handling the care for their loved ones.

Toss in the healthcare expenses for some of the surgeries, prescriptions, and care, and you could have families searching for answers to pay the bills.

Today’s consumers are thinking more about the future, living longer, and retirement, which means they are open to listening to more long-term care options including standalone LTC insurance or even hybrid life insurance/annuity products with LTC provisions.

That’s why November is a perfect time to contact your clients and prospects during Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Month. This month is designed with campaigns focused on how some LTCi products could provide protection if or when long-term care is needed.

What is Long-Term Care insurance (LTCi)? Long-Term Care insurance provides coverage for long-term care services, such as in-home care, assisted living, and nursing home care. These services are typically not covered by traditional health insurance and can be expensive. This insurance is designed to cover these costs for individuals who need assistance with activities of daily living or have a cognitive impairment as they age.

Ghosts of LTC Past

If you’ve had a loved one battle a long-term care situation, then you’ve witnessed some of the pains involved with treatment of a disease/condition, whether it involves a negative impact on the person physically, mentally, or both. You’ve sat in a healthcare facility watching the individual battle through medication, rehabilitation, multiple healthcare professionals and specialists, and to top it off, they start sending an exhausting amount of bills for the procedures, appointments, visits (at care facility or home), and prescriptions/medications.

In the past, long-term care insurance options were limited to standalone LTC products – meaning consumers had to purchase LTCi as “another” insurance product separately from life insurance or an annuity. Most people also had the mentality that “I won’t need long-term care” or “It won’t happen to me.”

Another misconception involved the fact that most consumers believed that Medicare or Medicaid covers LTC expenses during their retirement years. That’s not the case in most situations, so more people are understanding the need to budget for healthcare expenses during their retirement years. They don’t want the money earmarked for travel, fun, family, and other expenses to be depleted due to medical costs.

Ghosts of LTC Present

According to Lincoln Financial Group, 96% of Americans surveyed feel it is important to plan for long-term care in advance of needing it with 86% of people surveyed agree that having a long-term care plan would help them feel more confident about their financial future.

However, the long-term care stigma still exists prevalently in today’s society with four main misconceptions: “It won’t happen to me”, “Medicare or Medicaid has me covered”, “That’s what my savings are for,” or “My family will be able to take care of me.”

Per Lincoln Financial, Americans believe the risk is greater for someone else: 34% think they will need care; 38% believe their spouse will; and 56% assume one of their parents will. They also significantly underestimate the costs of long-term care, assuming the average annual cost of a private room is approximately $50,000 – less than half the true cost.

Unfortunately, financial professionals project that clients who experience an unplanned care event may spend their savings two times faster than anticipated, according to Lincoln Financial. There are also more risks involved with unplanned long-term care for loved ones including the emotional toll of providing care, physical burden and difficulty of caregiving, time sacrifices, financial cost, health consequences, and stress on family relationships.

While these risks have caused more fear in consumers, the escalating cost of care also could become a horror story for those who do not plan for LTC in their future. According to the CareScout website, the current national average for LTC costs is $131,583 per year for a private room in a nursing home and $72,924 annually for a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living facility.

Those costs are starting to resonate across many different age groups as 36% of GenX, 39% of Millennials, and 35% of GenZ are “extremely” or “very” concerned about paying for long-term care services, according to the LIMRA/LifeHappens 2025 Insurance Barometer Study.

Ghosts of LTC Future

For Americans 65 and over, LIMRA also states how 56% will need long-term care services at some point, 45% will need paid LTC services, 35% will have some out-of-pocket LTC costs, and 14% will incur out-of-pocket costs of greater than $100,000. More than 40% of consumers believe age 60 or older is the right time to buy LTCi, however, the sweet spot for buying long-term care insurance is actually between the ages of 50 to 55 per Nationwide.

So where is the long-term care insurance marketing going? According to OneAmerica Financial’s 2025 Long-Term Care Market Outlook, the demand for full-time workers in long-term care setting is projected to grow by 42% between 2021 and 2036. By 2030, individuals age 65 and older will make up approximately 20% of the U.S. population – 56% of whom are expected to require some form of LTC.

By 2050, the number of Americans age 65 and older is projected to reach 82 million (up from 58 million in 2022), and by 2055, the ranks of those 85 and up will swell to more than 17 million. Additionally, the number of Americans living with Alzheimer’s is projected to nearly double by 2060, reaching 13.8 million. On average, those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s can expect to live another four to eight years, further driving demand for LTC.

Per OneAmerica Financial, flexibility, simplicity and technology are emerging as key trends in the LTC industry. Basically, LTCi products need to be flexible, affordable, and customizable to meet the diverse needs of today’s market; easy-to-understand LTC offerings to help consumers make more informed decisions; and leveraging telehealth, smart home systems, and remote monitoring devices to improve the nation’s caregiver shortage and improve administrative efficiency and potentially reduce the burden on in-person caregivers. You can read the entire report by clicking here to view the PDF of this document.

Preparing your clients and prospects for potential long-term care costs could provide the protection they are looking for if or when an LTC situation happens to them. AIP Marketing Alliance is contracted with multiple, nationwide insurance carriers who have standalone or hybrid LTCi products designed to fit into their budget and long-term care plans.

AIPMA also has released its 2025 Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Month resource whitepaper, which contains numerous, compliant resources (including the Lincoln, Nationwide, and OneAmerica Financial materials above) to help promote the value of LTC with your clients. We also have included email marketing campaigns, presentations, and consumer-focused graphics to use on social media platforms.

Together, we can educate consumers about the value of planning for potential long-term care situations to assist in making decisions easier, using LTCi to pay for those healthcare expenses, and picking an environment better suited to the person’s situation and needs.

If you would like AIP Marketing Alliance’s Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Month materials, simply contact our Business Development team at (800) 783-5206 Press #2 or [email protected]. AIPMA downline agents also can access our standalone LTC carriers by logging into the Agent Tools section of our website.

For more than 40 years, AIP Marketing Alliance (AIPMA), an Integrity Company, serves as a premier life insurance and annuity distribution partner to provide full-service support to independent wholesalers, brokerages and agents from our Troy, Michigan office. NOT AFFILIATED WITH OR ENDORSED BY THE GOVERNMENT OR THE MEDICARE PROGRAM.

AIP Marketing Alliance is committed to STRIVE in ’25 as we support our independent insurance wholesalers and agents. Visit our blog on aipma.com to stay informed on these upcoming launches and learn why wholesalers nationwide choose AIPMA as their distributor for selling life insurance, annuities, long-term care insurance, final expense, and much more. Ask about our lead services, myAIP CRM platform with customizable recruiter portal, and online tools/resources designed to grow your business. The difference is personal.

AIP Marketing Alliance, an Integrity Company, has developed this electronic communication for informational and educational use only. Be advised, AIP Marketing Alliance, Inc., does not provide legal advice, tax advice, or guidance on issues involving securities laws, insurance laws nor securities or insurance regulations. This material should not be relied on as providing any such advice or guidance to either agents or retail consumers. Within this communication, AIPMA shares links for usage as information only. This content should not be interpreted as solicitation to purchase life insurance, annuities, or other products or as advice designed to meet your clients’ specific needs. Content involving fiduciary, tax, or legal advice should be directed to your legal, tax, and financial professionals for specific advice or product recommendations. AIPMA will not accept any legal liability resulting from any use of 3rd party material(s).