Now or Never: Long-Term Care Strategy with Kosta Yepifantsev

Can You Afford to Age in Place with Marc Glickman

November 22, 2022 Kosta Yepifantsev Season 1 Episode 11
Now or Never: Long-Term Care Strategy with Kosta Yepifantsev
Can You Afford to Age in Place with Marc Glickman
Show Notes Transcript

Join Kosta and his guest: Marc Glickman, Founder and CEO of BuddyIns, an organization helping thousands with the process of long term care planning and aging in place. Ninety percent of seniors report wishing to remain at home as they age, but is aging in place an option you can afford?

In this episode: What does long term care planning entail, and why is it important for those who wish to age in place?  How can BuddyIns help with the process of planning for aging in place? What advantages can aging in place offer seniors, and are there any situations where it can end up having a negative impact either socially or physically?

Watch this episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zobzTIQiO2M

Find out more about Marc and BuddyIns:
https://www.buddyins.com/

Find out more about Kosta Yepifantsev:
http://kostayepifantsev.com/

Marc Glickman:

Maybe you have three kids, and they all live around the country, and they don't know what your wishes were. And they all have different opinions as to what it should be. And the one that's closer to you is the one that bears the brunt of that and becomes resentful to the others, right? Are these things that you guys hear all the time because I hear them every single day.

Caroline Moore:

Welcome to Now or Never Long-Term Care Strategy with Kosta Yepifantsev a podcast for all those seeking answers and solutions in the long term care space. This podcast is designed to create resources, start conversations and bring awareness to the industry that will inevitably impact all Americans. Here's your host Kosta Yepifantsev:

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Hey, y'all, this is Kosta and today I'm here with my guest, Marc Glickman, founder and CEO of buddy ins an organization helping 1000s with the process of long term care planning and aging in place. 90% of seniors report wishing to remain at home as they age. But the question at hand is aging in place an option you can afford? Welcome, Marc. For those who might be new to the show. What does long term care planning entail? And why is it important for those who wish to age in place?

Marc Glickman:

Yeah, great questions. And thanks for having me on today. Long term care planning entails figuring out how do you want your final years to be right. How do you do you want to get care at home? Do you want to be more in a community setting? And letting your family know those wishes is half of the planning process? And then it becomes well, how do I fund my final wishes? Right? Do I want to fund it by investing the money and self funding? Does insurance make sense? And that's what we help clients navigate every day is trying to figure out what's the best way? What's the optimal way to fund what you want those wishes to be.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

So Marc, you've got over a decade of experience in long term care planning. What led you to this particular field of work?

Marc Glickman:

Sure, well, I grew up in the long term care insurance industry. My dad, actually one of the pioneers developed many of the traditional long term care products that were in the market in the 90s, early 2000s. And I'm an actuary by background. So I actually started my career, designing and developing products for the insurance companies. And then I switch gears and now I represent clients and use my knowledge to help them find the best value in the marketplace.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

How much has the industry changed? And specifically, what has changed about the industry since your father essentially started it?

Marc Glickman:

Yeah, just tell you back back in the late 80s, and 90s, there wasn't a lot of data about the insurance marketplace. And people got a lot of value from their policies. But it turned out a lot of those policies were actually underpriced. Oh, because of that, you know, we've seen rate increases on older products. So the insurance industry's learned quite a lot. Those clients that use those policies got a lot of value out of them. And we've only seen the demand, which we've seen, you know, on the horizon for a long time continue to grow. So now becomes well, how do we do this in a sustainable way where the insurance companies can offer these products and have sustainable rates. So we're seeing a proliferation now of a lot of newer types of products? Believe it or not, we use eight different types of insurance products to solve long term care planning that cover you at home, or in a facility setting. And because of that, you just have to be much more specialized in being able to navigate the marketplace than you used to when it was just one product, traditional long term care. And that's what everyone got.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

So when you say there's eight different products, like I mean, what are they? Pretty complicated.

Marc Glickman:

Yeah. We have health based comp products, which are like traditional and short term care is another type of product, which is like a one year type of policy. We have life insurance based products. And there's all kinds of different varieties of hybrids, where they're attaching long term care to a life insurance based product. And we even have annuity based products, which are great because you put in a lump sum, and they give you a multiple of that lump sum tax free if you need long term care, they can also be more accommodating due to clients with health issues. So we have a lot of different tools in our toolkit at the end of the day to solve different client's needs. And it's not a one size fits all. In fact, it probably really hasn't ever been that way everyone's Long Term Care Plan is different. And whether you're 40 years old and are planning when you're younger, or whether you're 85 years old, and you're hoping to have a plan, and you're probably gonna have a more immediate need. We have a solution for a wide variety of people.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Since you're essentially in this industry or since you've been in this industry since the very beginning. I have to ask, what was the thinking when they developed these insurance products back in the late 80s early 90s Like, did they think that people just weren't going to utilize them? And so, you know, it was kind of like, you know, worst case scenario type of insurance? And again, totally just curious. Yeah.

Marc Glickman:

Well, here's the interesting thing about it. Most of the people assume that the insurance companies got it wrong, because the claims turned out to be higher than they expected. But that's actually not the case. Wow. Okay. Anything that claims frequency was less than they expected. Okay, what happened is more people kept their policies than the insurance companies expected. They assume that each year 97% of people would keep their policy every year, which was the highest, what they call persistency of any product in the marketplace. But they underestimated that it turned out 99.5% of people kept their policies.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Wow. So it's because Long Term Care is a certainty, right?

Marc Glickman:

That's right. And it turns out your need for long term care grows over time, and people held on to those policies like gold. And because of that effect, it turns out they underpriced it because there were more people left in 3040 50 years, and they expected to pay out claims on so the assumptions that they got wrong are ones that, you know, I don't know that, in retrospect, he could have really anticipated that. Right? So interest rates have been very low and low interest rates put a strain because the insurance companies investing that money. And so I don't think anyone predicted the low interest rate environment to occur for so long. So the jury's still out as to whether that's gonna change, right, we're seeing an increase in interest rates now. But the bottom line is, I think the companies are much more comfortable today, because they've taken out the risk of people keeping their policies they've taken out of the risk of low interest rates. And so the products are much more conservative and much more, I think the insurance companies are much more on board with being comfortable offering.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Yeah, absolutely. So I got to ask, you know, we talked about the eight different types of insurance, and the eight different types of processes, essentially, to affect long term care. How can buddy ins help with the process of planning for aging in place?

Marc Glickman:

Yeah, see, our goal is to educate consumers about their best options and help them find a top insurance specialist that understands all those varieties of products. So we are a connector in the marketplace. And we are also a co agent with a specialist, which means that we're also on the client side with making sure that their specialist is doing what's in their best interest. What we also do is streamline the process because working with all these different types of products and insurance companies, right? I mean difficult. So we created tools and resources to digitize the process to make it easier and better customer experience overall. And that's how we can help people get more coverages. Sometimes they're just, like, frustrated about the process taking so long, and we can make that better.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Okay, so you answered this in the first question, but I need a little bit more detail. So you're not selling Long Term Care Insurance? You're not and you're working with long term care insurance agents? Are you also working with providers as well? Are you essentially serving as a conduit between all those different entities?

Marc Glickman:

That's exactly right, where we are licensed as an agency in all 50 states, we are a writing agent, like the person that interacting with the client, the specialist, but we're more behind the scenes, we're a facilitator, a catalyst to make sure that people have better outcomes. So we're like the specialist specialist, right, we're helping that specialist be a better, you know, can serve their clients better. And we do partner with other providers, like yourself, folks that are in the home care world, folks that are helping family caregivers, is a really important mission for us. Because when people don't have a plan, oftentimes the burden of that falls on a family member, right? A spouse or a daughter, right? And instead of putting them out there and not having anything for them to support them, we have resources to help that family caregiver not get burnt out.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

How many clients do you guys work with, say, I don't know, every year,

Marc Glickman:

we have several 1000 clients with it by insurance. But picture we have 10s of 1000s of people that get educated. Because it takes time it might it might take a year, two years, three years, five years before someone's ready to form a plan. Or there may be some event in their life that's dawns on them. Okay, that's what planning is about. Now, I know what I want to do, and they have more confidence to do it. So we're there to be there in the long run, so that when somebody is ready, they can get the resources that they need.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

As you're working with people, are you identifying a common theme that keeps coming up in the conversation? And also I want to ask, is affordability a big part of the of the process essentially,

Marc Glickman:

that's exactly actually where I was going when you said that Add the common theme is everyone thinks it's it's expensive, or it's going to be expensive reality of the world is that you're never insuring or self funding, you're always doing some degree of both. And you can decide as a consumer, how much you pay for your insurance policy, it's just a matter of how much benefits you're going to get out of that policy. We'd have some people that buy 50 or $100,000 of benefits, which isn't a large amount, given the cost of care and what we expect it to grow to into the future. But having that as a starting point, and a foundation can be really good for forming that plan and figuring out what to do if it turns out to be a longer term event. We have people that buy millions of dollars of coverage and in transfer more of that risk to the insurance company. There's no right or wrong answer, you have to figure out what value are you getting? What is your financial situation look like that you can afford to pay this over a longer period of time. But having some plan in our belief is much better than having no plan at all. So we encourage everybody to do whatever is right for them financially.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

So I'm assuming the majority of the time you're talking to people who want to age at home, they don't want to go to an assisted living facility or a nursing home, their first thing is, I guess I just want to live in my own home. How can we make this happen? How can you guys help? What are the, I guess the financial limitations and then also, I want to talk a little bit about how each home has to be changed or modified so that it's handicap accessible? Because a lot of people think like, well, you know, I can just retire here. But there's a lot of Americans who are living in two storey homes, you know, and they can't get up and their bedrooms are upstairs and they can't get upstairs, right? That's right. Right. So I'm just curious, like, what are those conversations like? Do you ever encounter somebody that's just waited too long? And then you know, it's kind of like Game over? We can't help you know, how does that go?

Marc Glickman:

Well, the good news is, it's never too late to do a plan. Of course, you don't want to wait until you need it to buy your insurance, like find your insurance when your house is on fire. But we have, we have crisis types of planning solutions as part of those aid solutions. You're right that 80% of people probably want to age in place age at home. But there's ways to fund that as well, right? Reverse Mortgages are a good example, right? Or you can use your home equity to potentially fund it. And there's a lot of different ways to buy policies that have benefits called Cash indemnity benefits that will allow you to pay for home improvements, like what we're talking about, right. So even the policies themselves have been designed, some of them reimburse for just the you know, the custodial care. But some of them also let you do whatever you want with the money. And that could be improving your home. So again, it's one of those things where you have a lot of choice. And so you want to build a plan that's going to suit you. At the end of the day, you know, you wanted to be flexible enough where let's say you've been planning, you know, early enough where it's 20 or 30 years out that it's flexible enough, where if your plan has changed, you know, you'll still have that that product will provide good value to

Kosta Yepifantsev:

do enough people know about the things that you sell, or the connections the the conduit, essentially, as that you're acting as do enough people know about what you're talking about?

Marc Glickman:

Now, I would say the biggest misconceptions, and there's many right Medicare is gonna pay for long term care. Of course, it does not, right, Medicaid is gonna pay for me. And of course it doesn't until you spend down your assets. And even those type of situations, it's hard to get waivers in many states to get home care, right. And there's long waiting lists, and they're underfunded. So those types of things come up versus in the government gonna come in, take care of me. And yeah, this is one of those things that you really have to plan on your own. And then there's misconceptions about the insurance market itself, right, people think about what it used to be. And it's a very different marketplace today than it used to be. There's a lot of different ways to cover it, like we've talked about, there's a lot of different ways to fund it. And health plays a much bigger role today than it used to play. Meaning that if you are in really good health, you might offer a certain set of options. But if you're in have waited longer, and you're not in as good health, we still have solutions for you. But we have to look at other types of products. And the value proposition is different because you're probably going to need this sooner. Right, right. But we have products designed to provide you immediate protection and tax free benefits and leverage to accommodate that.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Can you speak a little bit about those products if people are in crisis? And because I'll tell you a lot of times, you know, people get on YouTube and they're usually in crisis when they're watching these videos, like you know, they're kind of backed into a corner to try to figure out how to solve this problem that they have. So what what type of services can you guys offer?

Marc Glickman:

Okay, well, I'll give you three different scenarios. First one is my father in law at five years old, right? thought it's too late for me to plan for long term care. All right, a lot of the traditional products don't even go past age 80. And so you don't even have an option? Well, we were able to get them a short term care product in his state one year of benefits. So not going to cover the full risk. But great peace of mind for my family. And I right to know that, okay, that first year is taken care of it covers some at home cash benefits. And then if it's a longer term event, it gives us more time to plan. That product also does not have any height weight restrictions. We have a lot of clients that come to us where they're saying, you know, what, I've been declined from long term care because of my weight. Well, this we have a product that actually doesn't use that as one of their underwriting criteria, right, right, a great value there. We have a product where you can, and that's a pay as you go. So very affordable plan, we have a product for people that have more assets where they can put in a lump sum. So instead of paying it over the course of you know, 1020 30 years, they can pay it all at once. But it gives them immediate benefits. And if they don't use the long term care, they actually get their money back with some growth, because it's built around annuity chassis. It's designed to do long term care, but it's designed to also have a backstop, right. So you're not putting in a lump sum, and you're not ever getting anything out of it. And then we have a third product that's not an insurance product at all. It's called True freedom. And it's a subscription, homecare service, meaning that you're paying an annual subscription, which kind of looks like a traditional long term care insurance premium. But you're actually getting a bank of ours that you can use to cover homecare. And again, another way to do planning. So there's there's three right there that are flexible enough for people that have health issues, or waited long, long enough. There's a new product that's coming out which if you're already needing care, you can actually put down a lump sum, and then they'll give you a monthly payout for the rest of your life. Because they know that you're already health impaired, they give you a larger monthly payout. The worst your health is like reverse underwriting. Yeah, where they say like if you're in bad health will actually pay you more. And so that's kind of an interesting tool as well. So that there isn't that uncertainty about how long am I going to need care for? You're actually protecting the risk. And that's also an annuity based product, like a SPIA product.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Okay. Now,

Marc Glickman:

there's there's four different answers for you.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Thank you. Thank you. I think that as as we progress into kind of an aging population, I think people are finally starting to realize like, oh, wait, like, we need to start getting creative. Because we should or weren't creative the last 20 years, you know what I'm saying? So there's not a plethora of resources available? And the federal government sure doesn't want to foot the bill, you know? So I'm glad, I'm glad to hear that, that companies organizations are getting created to creative to try and meet the demand.

Marc Glickman:

Yeah, we don't want to ever say to somebody, no, we don't have anything for you for your plant. Right? That's the bottom line is nobody in our business. Like, we're really building relationships, we really want to help clients. We want to have something there to build some financial financial, and maybe it's not the fit for somebody, but we can even you know, prepare plans that can coordinate with Medicaid even so it's, it's an you're familiar with that space. So it's not. It just depends on what your particular needs are.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

What age do you think or age range? Do you think is the best time to start planning for? I guess you would consider it even retirement planning. It's just long term care planning is like tacked on to retirement planning. Yeah, so

Marc Glickman:

generally speaking, most people are planning today between the ages of 45 and 70. Okay, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, most people were actually above 70, that plan for long term care. But in the last 10 years, the average age of people buying Long Term Care Insurance has dropped to the mid 50s. So it's really come down within 10 years, or, you know, normal retirement age seems to be when most people are starting to become aware of it and starting to want to follow a plan. And they're beginning to become caregivers for their own parents. And that's a big driver, right?

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Yeah, they see it firsthand.

Marc Glickman:

That's right. There's over 50 million family caregivers today. And they're like, I don't want to have what's happening to me happened to my kids or my spouse. And so that's why we're seeing people coming to us. It's almost an epidemic of people that are family caregivers today. But it's never too young. And I'm an example of that my wife and I just got a policy I'm 39 years old. And the younger you plan, oftentimes the better value you can get, especially if in your in your in your best best health because the insurance company has a long time to invest that money and they can do much richer benefits. So you know, for us, we got a great value. My brother is 35 years old, he got his long term care insurance, and I've never seen a better value plan because of how young he was when he's buying it. So that's a big, pretty wide range. We've talked about 35. We've talked about 85. But most people are going to be right in the middle, like you said, kind of closer to figuring out what their retirement plans are.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Okay, sounds is good. What do you think is the most important factors to bear in mind while planning financially for aging in place?

Marc Glickman:

Well, first of all is to figure out, you know, that you do have your retirement costs covered. Because your long term care generally speaking is going to be come after like you have your living expenses, right, your rent your home, that was kind of thing. So typically, we're looking at people that have that are savers that are buying long term care insurance. And then within that marketplace, then you'd say, okay, for every dollar of premium I spent on an insurance policy, how many dollars of benefits Am I getting? I call that the insurance leverage, how much is the insurance company giving to you and then talk to your agent, your specialist, hopefully about chopping the market and showing you what is that leverage look like? When we compare that to self funding, typically, it's much greater than if you were to invest in that bond type of investment. And that's really where the insurance company providing those tax free benefits makes it make sense financially, then there's like extra benefits. On top of that, for example, if you or your spouse own a business, you can actually have the business pay your premium. And the IRS in many cases treats it like health insurance where you can take it as a tax deduction. So your premium is deductible as a business expense, and your benefits are still tax free. So you can layer extra value on top of the value that the product provides. So again, as you talk to your your agent about this, they can help you identify these sources of value. And that will also tell you how much you should buy. Meaning that if you're getting really great value, you should probably transfer more of the risk. If you feel like the value is more marginal, I would buy a smaller plan as a foundation, and maybe invest the difference. And so there's like I say, it really isn't a right or wrong answer. It just depends on what offer you're getting from the insurance company.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

So you said agents and I can tell you right now that I live in a town that's in between Nashville and Knoxville. And I doubt that there are any agents in my area that know. I don't know if they know about any of the plans that you're describing, except for maybe the annuity plan, and the details of it. So like, you've been in this industry for a while. You're working with insurance agents all the time. Is there a gap in knowledge for professionals who are in this industry? And how do we fix that?

Marc Glickman:

Yeah, there are fewer long term care specialists in the country today than there ever have been interest. However, the good news is that almost all of them are licensed in multiple states, they're available on camera on Zoom, you can meet them just like you would in your local community. And we're licensed in all 50 states. So it doesn't matter geographically where people are just find the person who has the best knowledge and skill set. And then again, you can meet with them as many times as you need to, in a you know, a zoom type of environment. That's what I would look for is talent. Now, that being said, we know a lot of wonderful long term care specialists in Tennessee, in both, you know Knoxville and Nashville, and I'm sure that you can find someone local. But you should look for somebody who really presents themselves as a specialist and that offers multiple types of products. That's the way you can really tell anybody that offers multiple types of products probably knows what they're talking about. Anybody who only has one product that they know, that's also doing financial planning, and life insurance is more of a generalist may not have all the tools in their toolkit, but they may be able to partner with someone else that does. So I wouldn't necessarily discount that either.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Interesting. What advantages can Aging in Place offer seniors? And are there any situations where it can end up having a negative impact, either socially or physically?

Marc Glickman:

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And we know it's like a spectrum. So for example, they may you may want to age in place while your spouse is with you. But let's say one of the spouses passes away. Now, it may be not as good of an environment because you just don't have that support system that you once had, and your dynamics change. So I think you can't really look at it in isolation, you kind of have to look at it as a spectrum of how the support is needed over time. One of the advantages of aging in place, though, is there's a lot of technology coming up. We've actually partnered with a company that specializes in companion robots for seniors. Oh, wow. They've built robots that actually learn what your preferences are. They tell you jokes, they take your blood pressure. They're actually a resource to prevent you from having to have your family caregiver there all the time. They're kind of adding value and helping support the family caregiver. And so because of that technology coming into the home, we see they're making the home environment a lot more friendly for people and not as lonely right. At the end of the day, that's kind of what you want to determine is some people prefer to have a community type of environment, some More specialists even now live in retirement communities themselves. They don't need care yet, right. But they know that if they do need care, they can advance to a higher level of services. Some people want to stay at home as long as possible and just want to create the environment around them there. But the good thing is, is there's more and more resources out there to do what you want to do. And as long as you let your wishes be known to who might be your caregiver in the future, that's what leads to the best outcomes.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

You know, go ahead, I'm sorry,

Marc Glickman:

go ahead. I say what leads to the worst outcomes, and I'm sure you know, you can, can relate to this, as well as not having a plan at all creates a crisis situation, and fighting. You know, maybe you have three kids, and they all live around the country. And they don't know what your wishes were, and they have different opinions as to what it should be. And the one that's closer to you is the one that bears the brunt of that and becomes resentful to the others, right? Are these things that you guys hear all the time is every single day

Kosta Yepifantsev:

all the time, and it's terrible? It's absolutely terrible, because at some point you hit you hit him so often, that he started to almost lose hope, like for society as a whole, because you're just like, oh, my gosh, like, at some point, this has to stop. Right? And you just hear it over and over again.

Marc Glickman:

Yeah. And that's really the problem we're trying to solve more than anything else is don't end up in a crisis situation. Yeah, no matter how much money you have 100% of people can have a plan. It doesn't cost you anything to have a plan and to express your wishes and to write down your wishes for your loved ones. Whether you buy insurance or how you fund that plan, right? There's a lot of choices, and you can make intelligent decisions there. But just start off getting some plan in place and having that conversation.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

So before we wrap, excuse me, before we wrap. This is like the million dollar question, in my opinion. You know, there's only like 46% of Americans that contribute to a 401 K. Okay, so if more than half the country doesn't even plan for retirement, how are they expected to plan for long term care?

Marc Glickman:

It's tough. I'll tell you the numbers and long term care are bleak right now. 10% of people that could be planning for long term care, are planning for long term care one out of every 10. So you know what I think that difference is their education, awareness. And I think it's going to grow just because more and more people are having personal experiences. Absolutely. And you can't avoid that. So I think you're gonna we're gonna see that awareness building. And hopefully we can be a resource to help people navigate it.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Would it be helpful if Long Term Care Insurance became like, like car insurance, where you were mandated to have it almost?

Marc Glickman:

Well, you know, what's interesting is that that's starting to happen to Oh, not necessarily how people expected it. Washington state last year passed a law requiring every employee in the state to either buy private insurance, and opt out or pay a payroll tax through their employer to fund this very small public program. And there's about 11 Other states looking at that same type of way to fund long term care. So yeah, if we don't plan for it, they may be coming in to mandate it through a payroll tax. But I don't think a lot of people like that outcome, either. So it's kind of forcing people to have this conversation. But yeah, it's definitely, definitely a lightning rod of whether people want the government to step in and do this.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Absolutely. Well, and, you know, to your point, if only one in 10, prepare for long term care, that means that 90% of the population is going to have to rely on either self funding, which you and I both know isn't going to isn't going to work, or on Medicaid, which is going to be publicly funded tax dollars that support the long term care industry. So I think it's I think Washington's model is is interesting, I don't think it goes very far in terms of moving the needle, but it's a good experiment to see its embrace. However, it Washington is a very open to new ideas type of state. And there's other states that aren't. And

Marc Glickman:

I think what's happening too, and you can see this, Washington is the second highest cost of home health care in the nation. Oh, wow. Okay. And Minnesota, Minnesota is number one, and they're looking at some similar things. So it's, it's kind of a function of costs. Okay. The writing's on the wall for Medicaid. You know, in Minnesota, 22 billion out of their $54 billion annual budget now goes to Medicaid, like,

Kosta Yepifantsev:

well, that's$1. And that's after they raised rates, and then they had to cut them, which as a provider, there's one it's one thing to raise rates, you cut rates. It's a I mean, it's like the French Revolution.

Marc Glickman:

To go back on that. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's that's kind of the trends we see is that you're right, that they're running out of money. So they're saying, hey, it's not going to be our Our problem, we're going to have to collect these revenues in another way. But that's why I would take advantage of this. Now the one silver lining from Washington, which is a good thing is that if you ask any employee in Washington, all of a sudden they've heard of long term care. Remember, he asked me that question. I mean, people know about this, I will guarantee you that probably nearly 100% of the employees in Washington have heard of long term care, which means that they may have a chance of doing a plan. No one's going to be surprised when this happens. So I think that's the silver lining underneath this is you can't really pay for that education, that marketing. And other states want to work with the private industry not being either or to help encourage people, right to plan in whatever way is best for them, whether it's insurance, or whether it's some other funding mechanism. But that's the first step.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

And I agree, and like you said, as employees become aware, there's going to be companies that build markets that cater specifically to that need. And then they can come in and they can have a group plan like they do with with health care, like they do with 401, k's and then that will slowly start the ball rolling essentially.

Marc Glickman:

That's right. Most of the issue with the insurance industry has been supply issues, carriers not wanting to offer the product because they had financial difficulties, like we talked about insurance agents getting out of the market, like we've talked about a shortage. Now we're seeing they're coming back into the market, we're seeing new group products, like you said, in reaction to these payroll taxes, we're seeing these eight different types of products. That's all in reaction to finding creative solutions to solve this problem, because there's so much demand consumer demand. So I do think it's a great thing because you will see more people finding the option that's right for them and not feeling like they're limited to something that's not attractive financially or health wise.

Kosta Yepifantsev:

Marc, thanks for being here. Today. We always like to end the show with a call to action. What's your best advice for someone entering the long term care industry as a patient, a caregiver, or an industry professional?

Marc Glickman:

Look around at the resources that are available to you. Sometimes it feels very lonely going and getting to long term care feeling like is anybody hearing these these cries, right for help from our clients from from people in the industry, there are a ton of resources out there. There's resources, like I said, for family caregivers, they're becoming more and more, you know, available. There's resources out there, you know, even if your insurance agent buddy ends is actually a community of long term care agents where we provide education and knowledge and there is no cost to working having a financial professional or an agent work with us. So look around for those resources right there out there. And don't feel like you're alone, right? It takes a village to take care if someone for long term care and just you know, find your find your village right and you'll be able to support whatever you're trying to do.

Caroline Moore:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Now or Never Long-Term Care Strategy with Kosta Yepifantsev. If you enjoyed listening and you wanna hear more make sure you subscribe on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you find your Podcasts, leave us a review or better yet share this episode with a friend. Now or Never Long-Term Care Strategy is a Kosta Yepifantsev production. Today’s episode was written and produced by Morgan Franklin. Want to find out more about Kosta? Visit us at kostayepifantsev.com

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