A former UnitedHealth Group executive is branching out with a new insurance product focused on the expense of aging at home.
HCG Secure, founded by Tom Beauregard, who was chief innovation officer at UnitedHealth Group before leaving and starting a new company, provides cash support for caregivers helping the policyholder age at home. Beauregard says he was inspired to look for a new solution to pay for these kinds of arrangements after seeing the upheaval in the long-term care market several years ago.
“As a health insurance executive, it was always clear to me that people didn't understand what Medicare covers or doesn't cover as they head into retirement,” he says. “There’s a blind spot for people as they come in, unless they've had a personal experience with their family, [around whether] somehow custodial care or long term care expenses are covered.”
Home Care Secure uses a five-question, non-medical underwriting process to rate and deliver a policy, which provides lifetime benefits to cover applicable home health care products and services, up to $60,000 over the course of the policy. Policyholders also get access to planning tools and telehealth services, with more to come.
“We've developed a model that gives people support long before they need the insurance – it’s this idea of advanced planning for families,” Beauregard explains. “A 65-year-old, middle income, couple coming into retirement [often hasn’t] done a lot of planning, and don’t need long-term care yet. So we've surrounded [our product] with planning and navigation services and assessments that we want people to use while they're healthy.”
HCG Secure is available in 22 states with support on broker distribution and the underwriting end from AmWins.
“We have other products in the pipeline that we've developed specs on, all the same idea: Let's give people who don't have long term care, can't afford long term care, and also potentially couldn't get through the underwriting process” access to these services, he concludes.
