Long Term Care Insurance: Medical Risk Management Issues in Underwriting

This article focuses on medical aspects of the risk selection process for long term care insurance products. Our objective is to identify for medical directors and underwriters key underwriting considerations upon which to build a sound strategy. Section 1 reviews demographic, social and other factors contributing to the need for these products. This snapshot of the long term care context sets the stage for Section II, a description of the infrastructure of long term care insurance products. That infrastructure includes basic product models, an array of functional capacity measurement approaches, and patterns of functional loss. Section III discusses the range of contract variables and underwriting options which impact risk selection strategies. Section 1V compares and contrasts the prediction of risk in the long term care market with more traditional life and health underwriting. Section V outlines a range of data collection options and discusses approaches to assessing that data.