As the number of Americans aged 65 and older continues to grow, so does the demand for long-term care services. Over the past few years, the meaning of long-term care has broadened to include a wide range of services, with nursing home care at one end of the spectrum and regular assistance with essential daily tasks at the other end. It's more important than ever for life and health insurance producers and financial planners to be able to meet their customers' needs by having a thorough understanding of this range of long-term care services, long-term care insurance, and long-term care partnership programs.

In order to sell long-term care partnership insurance in Georgia and help clients find the best plan for their needs, it's important to understand Georgia's Medicaid and Long-Term Care Partnership programs. The Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) opened the door to the creation of new state long-term care partnership plans with Medicaid. The Georgia Long-Term Care Partnership Program law followed two months later. The purpose of this course is for students to gain an understanding of these programs and policies, knowledge that insurance producers need in order to sell long-term care partnership insurance. These are also core aspects of the 8-hour training required to sell long-term care partnership insurance in Georgia.

Students are advised that this course alone does not fully cover the full 8-hour training Georgia requires for the sale of long-term care insurance. This course must be supplemented with a general course of study on long-term care, long-term care insurance, and the basics of partnership programs. (For the full 8-hour training requirement, WebCE offers a Georgia-specific version of its Long-Term Care: Programs, Policies, and Partnerships course.)

Upon conclusion of this course, students should understand:

• the eligibility requirements for Georgia Medicaid
  
• the programs available under Georgia Medicaid for long-term care services
  
• Georgia Medicaid income and asset limits
  
• the asset protection feature of Georgia's Long-Term Care Partnership program