Long-term-care insurance revisited.

After a year of protection under the umbrella of long-term-care insurance, my wife and I feel comfortable, reassured that benefits will remain in place and that there is yet another tie that binds us to our continued care retirement community known as Williamsburg Landing in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Currently, it is the only community with such an insured plan underwritten by a major life insurance company. In spite of some twists, turns, and bumps in that first year, it is operational, and the community is proud to be the pioneer. Other life insurance companies are fishing in the same waters, but thus far, they have reeled in fewer than half a dozen continuing-care communities and attached them to their insurance banners.

According to D. Martin Trueblood, executive director of Williamsburg Landing and a member of the task force on long-term-care insurance for the American Association of Homes for the Aging (AAHA), six or seven retirement homes covered by tong-term insurance out of 3,000 members is nothing to "AAHA" about.

Let us look at our community, up close, and observe how it is functioning with LTC in effect. Fortunately, during our first year, neither my wife nor I needed nursing home care. However, five of our friends and neighbors are permanent occupants in our 15-bed licensed nursing home.

As a three-year-old establishment, reaching its capacity of 320 in 1987, with an average age of 78, management already believes its facilities are inadequate and will build an additional wing to bring bed capacity to 37. (Construction was to begin in 1987.)

It should be pointed out that nursing home care stays usually are measured in months or days. And there is a waiting period of 60 days before insurance benefits become available. The spouses of some patients (in the Williamsburg Landing nursing home) maintain residences in the Williamsburg Landing retirement center.

Even on a small scale, in our own community the number of people expected to need long-term care is increasing. One estimate projects (throughout the U.S.) 9,000,000 requiring such care by 1990, and 15 million elderly needing it at the turn of the century.