When planning for long term care, make sure not to take for granted factors such as the elimination period. Otherwise, you might end up with more out of pocket expenses.

What is long term care elimination period?

The LTCI elimination period refers to the length of time the policy owner has to use his personal money to pay for care before his insurance provider starts paying benefits. Depending on the policy owner or his insurance provider, elimination period can be as short as 30 days or as long as 210 days. Some states set maximum days of elimination period.

A lot of insurance buyers sign up for long elimination period to take advantage of lower premiums. As you may know, longer elimination period results to more affordable LTC premiums. However, some forget that long elimination period is synonymous to more out of pocket expense. And unless they have enough in their nest egg, they could wind up depleting their retirement fund just because they wanted to save a few dollars in their LTCI premiums.

There are two types of elimination period namely the days of service elimination period and the calendar day elimination period.

1. In days of service elimination period, the waiting period is calculated based on the number of days the person received covered services, or services that the policy would cover after the elimination period. If the policy owner has a 60-day elimination period and he is only receiving care every weekday for a total of 20 days in a month, he will need to wait for three months before his insurance provider starts paying.

2. In the calendar day elimination period, the waiting period is calculated based on the number of days that lapsed after the policy owner was certified to qualify for benefits. This means that once the requirements to trigger a claim are satisfied, each passing day counts towards satisfying the elimination period, whether covered services are received or not.

To know more about other long term care options visit www.infolongtermcare.org . The website has rich literature that answers questions such as what is long term care, among others.