Beyond Genworth sits a whole tier of insurers that once sold long-term care, quit the market, and now do just one thing with those policies: manage them down and file for rate increase after rate increase. If you bought a policy in the 1990s or 2000s from a name that no longer sells LTC, this is the company you're dealing with — and the letters aren't going to stop.
We remain committed to being there when you need care, we monitor our claims experience responsibly, and rate increases are a regrettable necessity to keep the coverage sound. Your benefits are safe.
These blocks are run to be repriced. The carriers stopped selling because the product lost money, and the only lever left is raising premiums on aging policyholders who can't leave. "Committed to being there" is true in the narrow sense that they'll pay valid claims — but the cost of keeping your coverage is designed to keep climbing.
John Hancock was the second-largest individual LTC insurer in the country and one of the product's pioneers, selling since 1987. On December 2, 2016, it stopped accepting new individual LTC applications, blaming a decade of falling interest rates and the capital intensity of the business. It now services an enormous in-force block, files ongoing rate increases (policyholders have reported hikes like 26.8%, with letters warning of more), and administers the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP) for government employees.
That federal program is its own cautionary tale: the 2023–24 FLTCIP rate action raised premiums by up to 86% for enrollees keeping their original coverage, phased over three years, and the program has been suspended to new enrollees since November 2022, with the suspension extended through December 2026. Hancock has since returned to the market — but only through the hybrid door, with a linked-benefit product called LifeCare. It's rated A+ (a Manulife subsidiary), which makes it one of the financially stronger closed-block carriers.
The failure was structural, not a single company's mistake: insurers assumed far more policyholders would drop coverage (they didn't), that interest on reserves would stay high (it collapsed after 2008), and that claims would be shorter and less frequent than they turned out to be as people lived longer. Underpriced from the start, the blocks could only be salvaged by charging the original buyers more.
The increase notice will offer the same menu Genworth's does: pay more, cut your inflation rider, shorten your benefit period, or take a paid-up nonforfeiture benefit. For most people in reasonable health who can afford the premium, keeping a decades-old policy is still usually the right call — you'd forfeit years of payments and can't buy comparable coverage at your current age.
The bottom line: reducing the inflation rider is often the least painful way to hold the premium roughly level while keeping the core benefit, but run the numbers on what that costs you 15 years out, when you'll actually claim. Don't lapse in a panic over one letter. And know the terrain: this is a closed block engineered to be repriced for as long as it exists, so plan for the next increase rather than being blindsided by it.