Products
Front Range Life & Health, Inc. sells a wide variety of products, and can make referrals for others including Medicare Supplements, Medicare Part D Plans, Long Term Care, Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Critical Illness, Fixed Annuities, Equity Indexed Annuities, IRAs, SEP IRAs, Roth IRAs, Section 125 Plans, Cobra administration, Colorado Continuation administration, Short Term Insurance, and Travel Insurance.
All the products we help people buy are designed to protect assets and provide money necessary to deal with catastrophic needs. In today's medical environment, one of the most important protections is insuring adequate healthcare. To this end I help people over 65 buy Medicare Supplements and people under 65 buy health insurance.
Medicare supplements pick up the costs not covered by the government through Medicare. There are myriad gaps including, for example, the first three pints of any blood transfusion. Medicare supplement plans help people put a lid on these potentially high costs.
One major gap not covered by Medicare or Medicare supplements or health insurance is the possibility of a prolonged illness such as we watched Ronald Reagan and his family live with. The only government program available to those of us who are not ex-presidents is Medicaid. Before Medicaid will cover these costs a spend-down is required. This spend-down in Colorado requires that all the assets of the estate be reduced for both the spouse in the nursing home leaving little for the stay-at-home spouse : $90,000, one house, one car one wedding ring etc... The best way to avoid that spend down is by having an insurance company responsible for those costs instead of the family. That is accomplished through Long Term Care (LTC) insurance. Today there are a lot of creative ways to finance long term care without losing all the money spent if there never is any need.
People under 65 are even more at risk since there are many very bad plans for sale. I help people avoid the bad ones and buy good ones. If a person is unable to quality for insurance then the state of Colorado has an insurance plan for people who are deemed uninsurable but it is rather expensive. You can see it at: www.covercolorado.org.
Health Savings Accounts were created by congress for individuals who have high deductible health insurance plans. These provide a tax loophole useful to people in large tax brackets. The combination provides comprehensive health insurance with a tax deduction for out of pocket medical and dental expenses. Health Savings Accounts are a lot like traditional IRAs except more money can be squirreled away in them each year, they have no mandatory distributions and there is no penalty to use the money for medical costs. After age 65 people may use the money for none-medical purposes and simply pay the income tax on it at that time.
Another very important product that is integral to providing secure, predictable finances is life insurance. Term insurance is very affordable. Because of product innovation and changes in the mortality tables, most people who have life policies over four years old should do a comparison to see if they could do better today.
Critical illness policies started in Australia and grew popular in countries with government supported (and limited) healthcare where, for treatment at non-governmental clinics, people needed to pay cash. These policies pay the owner the face amount upon diagnosis of a critical illness - like cancer for example. The insured can use the money for treatments not covered by health insurance, to take vacations, to supplement lowered incomes etc. The money is available upon diagnosis and not related to actual medical expenses. Personally I have seen many people devastated by the financial consequences of a critical illness above and beyond medical costs. I believe strongly in these policies.
With the pitfalls of poor health taken care of, the next step is to avoid the pitfalls of poor planning: losing money unnecessarily to taxes and stock market downturns. The Federal government has given special tax status to an insurance product many of us should have: Fixed annuities - not to be confused with their market-based step-cousin Variable annuities. They are tax deferred until they are cashed out. Today we can take advantages of Equity Indexed Annuities which increase in value when the stock market goes up and hold steady when the market goes down. Imagine that - a product that does the market timing for you! You can have your money in the market 24 hours a day 365 days a year getting 60 to 75% of the upsides, none of the downside and preferential tax treatment from Uncle Sam to boot. These are especially kind to seniors who likely will not live long enough to see their investments come back if they go down a significant amount.
People buying insurance through work, on a group plan can take advantage of Section 125 of the IRS code which allows employees to select certain benefits normally paid on an after-tax basis and, through payroll deduction, to pay for these benefits on an untaxed basis. Paying for these benefits on a pre-tax basis allows employees to increase their take home pay and save the employer payroll tax as well. Section 125 Plans, also known as "Cafeteria Plans" or "Flexible Spending Accounts," can be structured to include a variety of benefits.