President Bush signed H.R. 2559 on December 27, 2001. This law makes Federal deferred annuitants eligible to apply for insurance under the Federal Long Term Care Security Act when they satisfy all requirements (age and service) for title to their annuity and have filed the application for that annuity. Before this bill became law, deferred annuitants were not eligible — only Federal annuitants retiring on an immediate annuity. This new law also makes the FLTCIP exempt from state premium taxes. These are taxes that our contractors, LTC Partners, would otherwise have had to pay. Before this bill became law, the contractor would have likely added the cost of these taxes into enrollees' premiums. So this is all good news!
H.R. 2559 — [Web Page]
[PDF File]
Added December 31, 2001
Did you notice the new links on our web page? MetLife and John Hancock working together as LTC Partners set-up a web site where individuals can sign-up now to receive more information about the FLTCIP around February, and to receive five issues of their health and financial bulletin. The site is
www.ltcfeds.com. You can also sign-up by calling their toll-free number at 1-800-LTC-FEDS (1-800-582-3337). After the holidays we'll issue a Benefits Administration Letter with more details (and probably a press release too). In the meantime, feel free to direct your employees to this new site and phone number.
Added December 27, 2001
Two of the nation's premier insurance companies joined ranks to win the competition to provide coverage under the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program - Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and John Hancock Life Insurance Company. Long Term Care (LTC) Partners, LLC, an unprecedented partnership formed by MetLife and John Hancock, will be devoted exclusively to our program. After LTC Partners conducts some final market research with members of the groups eligible to apply for this insurance, we will announce final rates and benefits.
Added December 18, 2001
Twenty-two states allow either a deduction from your state taxes or a state tax credit for purchasing long term care insurance. Why? Because, for most people, buying long term care insurance is a GOOD thing to do! State tax deductions and credits help encourage people to buy the insurance.
Take a look and see if your state is one of the 22.
Added November 23, 2001
Payroll Deductions Not Available for Early Acceptors
Here's a little more information about the early enrollment/acceptance opportunity we mentioned in
BAL 01-905 dated November 8.
There is no need for concern about payroll deductions -- people enrolling during this early period (without benefit of our extensive education and marketing campaign) will NOT be able to pay their long term care insurance premiums using payroll or annuity deduction. All of their dealings will be with our yet-to-be-named contractor, including setting up an automatic bank debit or direct billing arrangement.
Payroll/annuity deduction will be available for those who enroll during the long term care insurance open season sometime late summer/early fall of 2002. And at that time, those who enrolled early could decide to change to payroll deduction.
We haven't settled on any details at this point, but we wanted to assure you that agencies do NOT need to be ready for long term care insurance premium payroll deduction by early 2002.
Added November 11, 2001
FLTCIP and the FEHB Open Season for 2002
The 2002 FEHB plan guides (RI 70-1, RI 70-5, etc.) and health plan brochures contain a
one-page announcement about the new Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program. As your employees review the guides and brochures, they may have questions about this announcement and the FLTCIP. So we prepared a short list of
frequently asked questions that also appears on the web, with a link from the announcement page. See also
Benefits Administration Letter 01-905 of November 8, 2001.
Do Not Drop FEHB Coverage!
Apparently some people are confused about our upcoming long term care insurance program that will be available by October 1, 2002, but hopefully earlier. We've received phone calls from annuitants asking if it's true that they should drop their FEHB coverage in anticipation of this new benefit. That is NOT true. If anyone asks you this question, employee or annuitant, please tell them that the new long term care insurance program is not health insurance and does not replace their FEHB coverage. It is insurance to cover long term care needs such as nursing home care, assisted living facility care, formal and informal care in the home, adult day care, etc. -- care that is generally NOT COVERED by their FEHB Plan.
Please suggest that they visit this website for more information about the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program. We added a Frequently Asked Question about this issue.
Bottom line -- Employees and annuitants should not drop their FEHB coverage in anticipation of this new program. Thanks for helping us spread the word!
Educational Snippets are Now "Did You Know"
We redesigned our educational snippets into a new feature called "Did You Know". This feature contains very important facts about long term care and long term care insurance. You may want to share some or all of these facts with your employees.
Please take a look.
Added August 16, 2001
Can I Receive Credit For Already Having a Private Policy?
We just added a
new frequently asked question on this topic. This is by far THE most frequently asked question that we've received by email.
Added July 12, 2001
Educational Snippets
Have you been following our educational snippets on the main LTCI page? We posted our second one today and also added an archive so readers can follow all of the snippets. We hope to post them regularly to educate employees and others who visit our site about long term care and long term care insurance. You might want to use some of this information with your employees in emails, newsletters, Intranets, etc. Please help us spread the word!
Added July 10, 2001
Request for Proposals Issued
YES! We issued our Request for Proposals (RFP) for long term care insurance to the insurance industry. With one exception, the proposed product design in the RFP is identical to the
proposed product design here on our web page. We continue to listen to the public — at the request of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees (NARFE), the RFP now asks for the premium impact of using short form underwriting for annuitants, rather than long form underwriting.
Responses to the RFP are due to us in late August. Stay tuned...
Added June 20, 2001
Presentation by Assistant Director for Long Term Care on June 6, 2001
In response to numerous requests we have posted the slides used by Frank Titus, Assistant Director for LTC, at the 10th Annual Federal Benefits Conference in Norfolk, Virginia, on June 6, 2001.
Updated June 8, 2001
Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Long Term Care Insurance, But Were Afraid to Ask!
Well, almost! We just posted NEW
Frequently-Asked Questions. We've been listening to the questions you've been sending to our email address. You gotta check it out -- maybe we've answered YOUR questions. Of course, we know that you may have more questions than are in the new FAQs. There are some questions that we cannot answer until we negotiate with the insurance company and award a contract. And we can't resolve other issues until the open enrollment period in 2002. But we hope this is a good start.
Added June 1, 2001
Agencies Asked to Appoint LTCI Implementation Coordinators
On May 4 OPM Acting Director Steve Cohen asked department and agency heads to support the new LTCI program and designate an Implementation Coordinator to direct and coordinate implementation and roll-out activities for their department/agency. We expect the Implementation Coordinators to become supporters of the product and to be available throughout the enrollment period that starts sometime in 2002 and may extend into 2003. We will work with a representative team of Implementation Coordinators to develop a roll-out strategy that will be successful and doable from an agency perspective. [
BAL 01-903]
Added May 15, 2001
Subscribe Now to the LTCI Email Listserv
The LTCI listserv email list will provide newly breaking information on this developing program on a regular basis. Subscribe now to be sure that you don't miss any of the latest news, and encourage other human resources professionals to subscribe also. This listserv will operate well into 2003, so please make sure that new HR personnel subscribe when they come onboard. We need your support to make this work! [
Subscription Information]
Added April 24, 2001
Proposed Product Design
We posted our proposed product design for the new long term care
insurance program. Take a look and see what we've been
thinking about. Things could change by June when we'll issue our
request for proposals to the insurance industry. And things could
change again after we select the insurance carrier(s). But this should
give you a general idea of what the product may look like.
[
Web Pages] [
Accessible Version]
Added April 9, 2001
New Links to Background Information on LTCI
At this stage in the implementation of this important new program we are all learning the basics about Long Term Care Insurance. To help in this, we have added two new pages to our web site — one giving
links to important background articles and consumer tips, and the second providing
links to related (nonprofit) web sites.
Added March 12, 2001
New Series of Benefits Administration Letters on LTCI
We have inagurated a new series of Benefits Administration Letters (Series 900), dealing exclusively with the new Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI) Program.
Letter 01-901 of March 9, 2001, announces a new OPM office established for implementation of this program, and explains the role of human resources professionals in this new program.
Added March 9, 2001