Why We Think Long Term Care Is So Important

Long-Term Care, Long-Term Security: The Lenore Bible Story

Lenore Brown Bible says she’d be on food stamps if she hadn’t protected her family’s assets with long-term care insurance. Instead, she’s tucked into a cheery, spacious apartment in Coleville, Washington, a farming and logging town of some 5,000. And she’s living it up, at least as much as her age-related infirmities will permit.

Lenore saved her estate by buying long-term care insurance in 1974, 10 years before her husband Ralph’s physical condition became so debilitating that she had to place him into a nursing home.

He died in 1990 and, at 84, Lenore is finally dating again. Her beau is Joe Elles, Lenore’s "first love," as she calls him, from the Colville High School class of ‘34. He’s recently single after a long, happy marriage that ended when his wife passed away. Together, Lenore and Joe are finding their way back into the gentle rhythms of their hometown.

Their mutual agenda includes dining out, rooting for the Mariners, visits with old pals, occasional meals at the senior center, church on Sundays, and long drives through the meadows and pine-clad mountains of this Rocky Mountain enclave.

Lenore’s days weren’t always this comfortable or secure. So, she says, she "grew up looking ahead."

The Brown family was making it—barely—when their father was killed in a logging accident. That was in 1930, when Lenore and her twin brother Leonard were just 14. The family hadn’t had much before, but their breadwinner’s death was devastating.

"Dad didn’t have insurance, so we were left with nothing. That sure helped teach me the value of planning for hard times," she says.

Floyd Bible, a year ahead of Lenore in high school, introduced his brother Ralph, older by four years, to Lenore at a Grange Hall gathering in nearby Myers Falls.

"He couldn’t dance, so I taught him," she remembers with a laugh. "But he had a 1926 Chrysler, a grand big car, and he hauled me, mom, my brothers and sister and anyone else who wanted to go to the Grange, to the movies to picnics and to ball games. They married on October 29, 1938.

Life was suddenly sweeter for Lenore. They moved onto Ralph’s parents’ land and built a home and barn where they lived and worked for the next 15 years until buying a spread of their own in 1953. Ralph built a herd of cows that would eventually grow to 46, a grade A dairy.

In comparison to her previous life, Lenore was now relatively prosperous. Her new husband even took on night work at a sawmill to bring in extra dollars for their growing family.

And grow it did. Ron arrived in 1940, followed by Jean the next year. Kenneth was born in 1943 and, finally, Theresa in 1958.

They didn’t have insurance in those years, Lenore explains, and that made her nervous.

"Ralph’s family was relatively well-fixed and they just didn’t believe in it," she says. "They always made enough to pay for doctors and medicines as they needed them, and they looked at insurance protection as a big waste of money. On the other hand, my family had lived pretty close to the bone, and I was concerned. But to keep the peace, I went along."

She went along, that is, until the ‘70s when her part-time work and the family’s growing prosperity gave her enough "pin money" to buy some security.

"I was bringing in a fair amount, doing alterations for tailor shops and dress shops and making clothes for friends. I salted a bit of that away each month.

"We were going along pretty good," she recalls, "when a friend referred an insurance agent to me. I learned some things.

"He told me that neither Medicare nor health insurance would cover long-term care. If we needed it, Ralph and I would have to pay for that ourselves."

She reasoned that, by the time she and her husband needed the kind of help the policy would provide, their children would be grown and tending to their own families’ needs.

"The more I thought about it, the more I felt that kind of policy would be a good investment. When we needed it, we’d have funds to pay for care in a retirement home or a long-term care facility, or even in our own home."

Recalling her family’s precarious existence following their father’s death, the agent’s reasoning was enough to persuade Lenore. She signed up, for both Ralph and herself.

But she didn’t tell her husband.

"I was in charge of the checkbook," she explains. "I paid all the bills, including the policy. One of the biggest things it brought me was peace of mind. I didn’t have to worry about what would happen to our savings if he or I got sick. And if we needed it, we could pick the kind of care we wanted.

"The alternative was that, if we got really ill, we’d have to spend every penny we’d earned, then accept whatever kind of help the government was able to give us. I didn’t like that option."

By 1980, Ralph’s sixty-ninth year, they decided it was time to quit farming. Ralph and Lenore divided their property into 20-acre parcels then moved to town as they were sold.

During the next few years, she and her children noticed that Ralph was becoming forgetful, vague.

"It was little things: forgetting where he put a tool; that we had an appointment to meet folks; not being where he said he’d be. Things like that."

Over time, his condition worsened, and Lenore found it harder and harder to care for her husband. A doctor finally confirmed what she’d begun to suspect: Ralph had Alzheimer’s disease. Ralph also was diagnosed with Parkinson's.

They’d fallen into a category occupied by an increasing number of Americans. In nearly one-quarter of households, at least one adult is providing care for an elderly person.

In 1984, when Lenore could no longer take care of Ralph at home, she moved him to a nursing home. He was in and out of assisted living facilities for the next five years, but always in decline.

"And the insurance was there the way we counted on it being. All those years, and I never paid a dime."

Finally, on February 13, 1990, he passed away in Colville’s Pinewood Nursing Home, just a few blocks from her apartment.

Looking back, Lenore considers what might have happened: "When I bought the insurance, we were relatively young and, because of that, the premiums were certainly affordable. And when Ralph needed it, the money was there. Without it, we would have been wiped out.

"And I’m keeping up the policy for myself. I have an active life, but I’m probably going to need help before too many years pass. My kids have lives and bills of their own, and I just wouldn’t ask them.

"Besides," she says, "I’m used to taking care of myself—and sometimes, a few others, too."