Monday, May 4, 2009

Long Term Care Alerting Methods Revealed by Industry Leader

LTC Leader, with Offices in Battle Ground, Shares Secrets for Keeping Up on Developments in Long Term Care Insurance
Battle Ground, Washington -- Consumers and professionals with an interest in long term care insurance need no longer dig so hard for information. Now they can do as the pros do: have the information come to them, in bits and pieces as it develops. "We're happy to share our secrets," says Philip Shields, Battle Ground-based agent for LTC Financial Partners LLC (LTCFP), one of America’s most experienced long term care insurance agencies.

One of two methods is setting up the Google Alerts system to deliver periodic notifications of Internet postings on the subject. Google Alerts is a beta service of Google; it provides email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on any choice of query or topic. Focusing on long term care insurance, as Shields and colleagues do, provides benefits such as --

* Learning which insurance carriers are most active in the LTC field.
* Finding which carriers are soundest in the current economy, and which are struggling.
* Keeping up on new benefit options and premium costs.
* Finding why more and more individuals and companies are including LTC protection in their forward planning.
* Tracking the trend toward offloading LTC costs from Medicaid to the private sector.
* Getting the latest on tax legislation and emerging State Partnership programs that offer lucrative incentives.

To set up Google Alerts as Shields recommends --

1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts.
2. In the Search terms field, enter the words: long term care insurance.
3. For Type, select "Comprehensive," "News," "Blogs," "Video," or another content-type choice.
4. For How often, choose "once a day," "once a week," or "as-it-happens."
5. Then enter your email address in the Send to field, and you're done.

The second method of keeping up is even simpler. Just visit the industry's new social network, the Long Term Care Insurance Guild, at http://www.ltcguild.com, and view the news alerts posted there. "I make it a habit to visit LTC Guild often, usually once or more a day," says Shields. "So do hundreds of other pros, ranging from LTC agents to carrier executives to people in allied fields such as financial advice."

To find the alerts on the LTC Guild site, just click onLong Term Care Insurance NEWS in the middle of the home page, toward the top.

Information about LTCFP's offering, long term care insurance, is available from Shields, who may be reached at web.ltcfp.com/philipshields or 360-687-1838.

Philip W. Shields, CLTC Certified LTC Specialist since January 1996, is consistently one of the Northwest’s top LTC specialists. Request your free quotes or LTC consultation by calling Philip at 360.687.1838 or 503.939.4446.

Philip Shields is licensed in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and other states, and is the #1 specialist in the metro Portland, OR - Vancouver, WA area. Philip consults with people all over the greater Northwest.

Because he is independently licensed with 12 of the leading carriers, Philip Shields can help you design the policy that will give you your best value, best financial rating and your best chance for being approved. Some of the carriers Philip represents include John Hancock, MetLife, Prudential, Allianz, MedAmerica and many others. Call Shields today for your free LTC quote and consultation.

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