You can buy life insurance that can be used for nursing homes

When Richard Becker and his wife, Flora, now both 68, purchased long-term care insurance in 1997, he thought of his father who died at 94 in an assisted living facility without benefit of such coverage. But as rates for the Pennsylvania retirees’ policies soared — doubling in seven years — the couple calculated the cost of payments over the coming decades, then weighed their chances of ever collecting. “We dropped it,” Becker says. This was not before they had paid in about $30,000. “It’s goodbye to that,” he says.

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By Carol Marie Cropper
Business Week, May 2, 2005