Is Long-Term Care Insurance Worth It If You're Single?

Why the math is different when you're single

For a married person, the first caregiver is usually the spouse, unpaid, sometimes for years before anyone gets hired. Single, that line in the plan is blank from the first day. Every hour of help is either paid for or comes from a friend you'd rather not wear out, and the hours add up: the Administration for Community Living says someone turning 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing long-term care, for 3.7 years on average for women and 2.2 for men.

Medicare doesn't pay for that care. In 2025 the national median was $35 an hour for a home caregiver, $74,400 a year for assisted living and $129,575 for a private nursing-home room, according to the CareScout Cost of Care Survey. Insurance is one of three ways to pay. The other two are your savings and Medicaid.

What it costs in 2026

Two things jump out. The spread between insurers is enormous: the same Illinois couple's quotes differed by more than $2,500 a year. And women pay more than men, because they need care for longer. Get at least three quotes through an independent agent who sells more than one company's policies.

Who it fits, and who should skip it

It fits if you'd have to spend most of your savings before Medicaid helped, you're in your 50s or early 60s and healthy enough to pass underwriting, and you care whether you get care at home rather than in a facility. Medicaid's home-care programs often come with a wait: KFF counted 606,895 people on waiting lists in 2025.

Skip it if your savings are small enough that you'd qualify for Medicaid within a year or two of needing care, if the premium would crowd out the rest of your retirement saving, or if you could pay three years of private-room nursing-home care yourself. At the 2025 median that's $388,725.

Hybrid policies, and the Partnership rule

A hybrid or linked-benefit policy combines life insurance with a long-term care benefit, often bought with a single premium. If you never need care, the death benefit goes to whoever you name, which for a solo ager might be a friend or a charity. The AALTCI's 2026 index added new comparisons of hybrid and traditional policies, and they're worth quoting side by side.

Ask whether a traditional policy is Partnership-qualified. Under a state's Long-Term Care Partnership program, every dollar the policy pays out protects a dollar of your assets from Medicaid's spend-down later, and those protected assets are also shielded from Medicaid estate recovery. Your state insurance department can tell you whether a policy qualifies.

The tax deduction in 2026

Premiums for a tax-qualified policy count as a medical expense, up to a cap set by your age at the end of the year. For 2026 the caps are $1,860 if you're 51 to 60, $4,960 at 61 to 70 and $6,200 over 70 (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32). They only help if you itemize and your total medical expenses pass 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. If you're self-employed, the premium can count toward the self-employed health insurance deduction instead. Benefits paid by a qualified per-diem policy are generally tax-free up to $430 a day in 2026.

If you don't buy it: plan B

Skipping the policy is a real choice, not a failure, but it needs a plan. Earmark savings or home equity for care. Know your state's Medicaid asset limit, and remember the 60-month look-back on gifts. Most of all, name the person who would arrange care, because insurance pays for help but doesn't hire it. That part of the plan is in who will take care of me if I don't have kids.

Your first step this week

Ask an independent agent for quotes from three insurers for the same benefit, then compare the cheapest one with three years of assisted living at your local price. If the premium is less than one month of that care each year and you could keep paying it after a 50% increase, it's worth a serious look.

Keep reading

• The Best Long-Term Care Books (2026): Paying for It vs. Actually Arranging It — Paying for care is a well-covered shelf. Arranging it — hiring, vetting, running it, and who does that if you can't — is nearly empty. Which book covers which half, compared honestly.
• Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old If I Don't Have Kids? — Mostly people you pay and people you named in writing. What care cost in 2025, who arranges it when nobody's coming, and the three moves to make now.
• How Do You Qualify for Medicaid for Long-Term Care? — How Medicaid pays for long-term care when Medicare won't — means-testing, state-specific income and asset limits, the 5-year look-back, spousal impoverishment protections, and why an elder-law attorney usually pays for itself.
• Assisted Living vs. Nursing Home: How to Tell Them Apart — The real difference between assisted living, nursing homes, and long-term care — what each provides, why Medicare usually won't pay the bill, the 100-day skilled-nursing rule, and who actually pays.