For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANSPONSOR NEWSDash daily newsletter.
Products April 16, 2015
Firm Debuts Retirement Health Costs Planning Tools
HealthView Services says its new calculators complement its existing tools used by major companies and advisers to help individuals plan for, manage and reduce retirement health care costs.
Reported by PLANSPONSOR staff
A set of consumer-facing tools and a white paper from HealthView Services aim to help people incorporate health care costs into retirement planning.
HealthView Service’s tools give consumers a better way to understand what their health care costs might be in retirement, as well as long-term care costs and future retirement savings. Users receive a report that details average costs for people in similar circumstances after they supply basic information, such as age, gender, health status and location. New calculators were designed to spark conversations between investors and advisers to discuss how these expenses can be built into existing plans for retirement.
The tools draw on the firm’s actuarial and medical professional-reviewed approach to calculate expected retirement health care costs for broker/dealers and financial advisers, according to Ron Mastrogiovanni, founder and chief executive of HealthView Services. “The health care costs calculator draws upon more than 50 million health care cases and a broad range of data points to provide a comprehensive perspective on the expected health care costs retirees will have to pay for out of their own pockets,” he said in a statement.
Despite the concerns about health care costs in retirement expressed so commonly by consumers and advisers, many people still haven’t built these costs into their retirement planning, the firm says. HealthView’s white paper, “Closing the Retirement Health Care Costs Planning Gap: The Next Retirement Planning Challenge,” highlights a number of reasons for the gap and outlines several simple retirement planning steps and questions that need to be asked. Case studies help underscore the benefits of incorporating health care costs into retirement planning.
“The takeaway from this work is that while total lifetime health care costs will be higher than many expect, if planned for early enough, these costs are manageable,” Mastrogiovanni believes. “By incorporating them in planning during working years, we believe retirees will be better positioned to make informed planning decisions and realize the retirement security they seek.”
HealthView Services provides retirement health care planning applications, including Medicare, long-term care and Social Security optimization. More information is on its website.