CUNA Mutual Insurance CUNA increased my LTC premium by 99.5%! I can't afford my policy now and might have to forfeit the 25K paid over the past decade. Madison Wisconsin

CUNA Mutual Insurance company just doubled my premium for Long Term Care (LTC); signing a policy with them was the worst decision of my life.  I purchased this policy 11 years ago; it was expensive, but the cost was acceptable when measured against the potential expense of medical care for my wife and I.  But by doubling premiums, the costs now are ridiculous in respect to the benefit.  Over a long lifetime, we would pay them over $200,000 – more than we will pay for health care insurance -- and money that we will not get back should we not use it.  We would have been far better off simply investing our premium elsewhere and paying potential LTC costs from money that is actually ours.    

CUNA justified this eruption in policies as if they were shocked at how expensive medical care had become.  The fear of which was the reason why I bought LTC insurance to start with!  Apparently, the shock of CUNA’s poor business decision was sufficient to cause them to cease selling any more LTC insurance.  Which now means they have no new contribution coming in, and that all expenses have to be met from existing policies.  Which undoubtedly also means that they will increase our rates again and again.  This is how a Ponzi-scheme ends badly – when there are no longer fools and patsies funding the lucky few at the top. 

Anticipating the increases that are undoubtedly coming, I tried to escape from CUNA.  I appealed their decision and asked for options to convert the money paid thus far into some form of pre-paid insurance; or simply get my money back in order to start over with another company; or even pay a surrender charge to leave.  But I was denied everything.  Had they increased my premium by a little bit more, then they would have triggered a pre-paid policy exit option.  But they ONLY increased our rates by 99.5%. 

Thus trapping us so that we have to swallow the increase tsunami, or gut the policies to lower the cost, or just walk away and forfeit the 25K paid over the past 11 years.  It is my belief that CUNA knowingly and deliberately is exploiting us to balance the books on their incompetent LTC decisions.  CUNA is simply transferring all of the cost and risk to us in order to save themselves from their poor business calculations.  LTC insurance was supposed to have minimize my financial risks.  But picking CUNA has been the worst decision of my life and jeopardizes the finances that I had hoped to protect.

So I am considering leaving now, even if it means forfeiting the 25K I have invested in LTC.  Painful as this will be, it is likely a better choice than throwing good money after bad, risking additional increases that will certainly come, and investing more into a company that clearly cares nothing for me.  I feel like I’m being robbed.