So what about people living and growing old in India? Neither do we have long term care insurances nor social security. We believe our social security is our children.

Let us take a real life example of Mrs Mehta. She wantd to liquidate some of her investments as her mother-in-law had suffered a paralytic stroke and with the limited insurance cover they had, her hospitalisation expenses have been taken care of. But a paralytic attack, or illnesses like the Parkinsons or Alzheimers require prolonged post hospitalisation care. A private nurse, physiotherapy, medicines, full time care giver and the needs are long. Needless to say, they are expensive.

A chart put up in front of the Stroke Unit at one of Mumbai’s leading hospitals shows over 300 patients admitted in the year 2011 — making it 25 patients every month in just one unit of one hospital in the suburbs of one city.

It was probably just luck that you and I were not part of this statistic last year. Can’t count on that luck forever, can we?

What are our options for handling unfortunate expenses such as these? Hope that such a thing would never happen to us? Depend on our relatives, children, siblings to bail us out, if at all it happens? Expect the government to support? Wait for some suitable insurance policy to come so we can buy it?

We can do all of the above. And while we are talking about insurance policies, there did exist one long term insurance policy from New India Insurance company called Bhavishya Arogya a couple of years back. In this policy, one pays premiums upto their age 50 and can claim benefits after retirement till their very end to cover expenses related to home care, ongoing medical support, hospital and domiciliary expenses for illnesses caused in old age. However this policy has since been discontinued for various reasons.

The increasing incidence of illness requiring long term care, social conditions where children cannot be depended upon and the affordability of many to buy policies like this are good reasons why general insurance companies should consider coming out with a good long term care insurance products.

If such a policy does come out at affordable premiums, we might strongly recommend it. If not, or till then what? Children may help, no doubt. They might feel responsible to take care of you and all that feels good. However, how much would you want to burden them, when they would themselves be struggling to make their lives?

A long term care plan as part of your financial plan or retirement plan is in order. Along with the estimated post retirement expenses, estimate an expense necessary for increased medical care at that time. Starting now, put aside small sums to create a corpus that you can dip into if the need arises.

Apart from criticism there is definitely one thing that is more a pleasure to give away than to receive — financial help to children. If by good luck, the need never arises then this corpus is a nice little gift to your children.