As I said in detail in a prior post, long term care insurance is not a solution for the custodial care of the aging. Giving a large share of your money to a private entity over 20 or 30 years, expecting in every case it will meet your needs that many years later, is a good way to pay and get nothing.
Today, according to Bloomberg News, MetLife announced it will halt the sale of long term care insurance. Fortunately for its long term care customers, it is a big company and long term care is a small part of their business, so profits elsewhere might allow claims to eventually be paid. Not so for a company for which long term care insurance accounts for a larger share of the business. By using optimistic assumptions, such a company can divert a large share of premium payments to executive pay and bonuses, then run out of money 20 or 30 years later as its customers age. Imagine you are 80 years old, you've paid in $600,000 to a company, if you stop paying you get nothing, but it will likely be unable to honor its claims? At least Metlife pulled the plug early.