To further encourage its citizens to plan ahead and make wise decisions for their LTC needs in the coming years, the local state government of Arizona, together with the cooperation of some private insurance companies, launched the Arizona partnership long term care program that aims to assist and provide the residents with more affordable LTC policy options.

The government of the United States has seen the need to plan early and decide properly on the kind of LTC plans that its residents should acquire. But the government is also aware that some people tend to take it for granted because of the expensive rates and monthly premiums that LTC plans have. This is the reason why one of the provisions of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 is to let the states draft methods and programs on how to have cheaper LTC policies for the majority of the American people, and this is when the states’ partnership program was initialized.

Partnership policies offer almost the same benefits as that of the other private LTC plans available in a certain state. The partnership policies, however, have some built-in features that are not available with the other kinds of LTC plans. These exclusive features add advantage for the sake of the partnership policy owners.

One of the unique features that this kind of policy offers is the reciprocity standards set among the different participating states in the program. Through this, the insured person may transfer to another state and still keep his Arizona partnership long term care policy to receive benefits. Be reminded, however, that the state that he will transfer to should also has partnership program and participates in the reciprocity agreement.

The Dollar-for-Dollar asset disregard feature allows the policy owner to keep a dollar of his assets that will be disregarded by Medicaid should he decides to apply for eligibility in the future. The disregarded assets are equivalent to the amount that the person’s partnership policy has paid out in benefits.

Owning a partnership policy does not automatically makes the person qualified for Medicaid benefits. If his partnership policy has already expired and he still needs to receive LTC services such as proper medical care and attention from the licensed medical professionals, he may still be qualified given that he pass and meet the requirements set by Medicaid for eligibility.

One more essential feature that is present in all LTC policies is the inflation protection. It provides certain levels in which it determines what kind and how much inflation protection an individual would get for his policy. The levels are all based on the age of the person at the time of his policy acquisition that is why many insurance experts suggest that LTC policies be purchased at a young age. The younger age a policy was bought, the higher and better level of inflation protection the individual would have.

Inflation protection has the capacity to adjust and make the value of a certain policy updated according to the current costs of LTC services available. This means that Arizona partnership long term care plan bought years before the owner has actually get to use it will have adjusted values and may even give the insured individual the chance to use more LTC services and benefits than he has actually paid for.