Lower Your Benefit Amount
This is the maximum amount that can be reimbursed for long-term care expenses on a daily or monthly basis. You can reduce the maximum benefit amount your policy would pay each month/day which would lower your premium. (Example: $300 of daily benefit can be reduced to $250 per day.)
Impact: If you reduce your maximum monthly/daily benefit amount, you'll have to pay more out of pocket for any expenses that exceed your new, lower benefit amount.
Reduce Your Benefit Period
This is the minimum number of months or years that you can be reimbursed for benefits. You can reduce the minimum length of time over which the benefit could be paid which would lower your premium. (Example: Shortening a lifetime benefit period to a 6-year benefit period.)
Impact: If you reduce the benefit period, you'll be reducing the total amount of time that benefits can be paid on your policy. This means that you'll have to pay more out of pocket for any expenses that you incur after your benefit period has expired.
Increase Your Elimination Period
This is the number of days or weeks that you must pay for covered care before your policy begins to pay benefits. You can increase the length of time you'll pay for your care before the policy begins to pay benefits, which would lower your premium. (Example: Increase your elimination period from 12 weeks to 52 weeks.)
Impact: If you increase your elimination period, you'll be increasing the amount of time in which you'll need to pay out of pocket for expenses you incur before your policy begins to pay benefits.
Reduce Your Inflation Protection
If you chose this benefit at the time you purchased your policy, this protection helps your insurance coverage keep up with the rising cost of care by growing your daily or monthly coverage over time. You can decrease your inflation protection which would lower your premium. (Example: Reduce your inflation protection from 5% to 3%.) Additional inflation options may be available; contact the dedicated client service team or your financial representative for more information.
Impact: If you reduce your inflation protection, your maximum monthly or daily benefit amount will be lower in the future than you originally planned for, which means you'll need to pay more out of pocket for any expenses that exceed that lower amount.
Note: Your state may have specific rules about the types of inflation protection required to maintain partnership status on your policy. If you have any questions about these rules please call our dedicated client service team.
Drop Survivorship Benefit
If both you and your spouse or companion chose this benefit at the time you purchased your policies, then if one of you dies and your policies are in force, no further premiums will be due. You can remove the survivorship benefit. which would lower your premium.
Impact: If you or your spouse or companion passes away, the survivor will have to continue paying their premiums in order to maintain his or her policy.
Note: If one spouse/companion drops the benefit from his or her policy, it is automatically dropped from the associated policy as well.
Drop Non-forfeiture Benefit
This benefit, selected at the time of issue, allows you to stop making premium payments at any time and keep a reduced policy in place equal to the amount of premiums you1ve paid. If you choose to remove this benefit, your premium would be reduced.
Impact: Without this feature, if you stopped making payments in the future, the policy would end and there would be no reduced coverage available to you, unless at some point in the future an option to exercise a contingent non-forfeiture benefit is made available to you.
As you think about the options available to you, please know that you can combine and choose more than one option to further reduce the impact on your premiums. You will be provided with ample time to review all available options as you work with your Northwestern Mutual financial representative and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company.