Long-Term Care Producers:

1. Review the regulations that apply in your state(s):

Requirements for Initial (First time) Training
Requirements for Refresher (Ongoing) Training

2. Select course(s) certified to fulfill those requirements to the satisfaction of ClearCert's Member Carriers:

Congress passed the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2006 to restore incentives for states to implement long-term care partnership programs while making it more difficult to shield assets when applying for Medicaid eligibility.

This action was taken in response to the dramatic increase in long-term care expenses as a component of state Medicaid budgets. According to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), the percentage of public costs for nursing home expenses has grown from 26.8% in 1970 to 59.4% in 2007, an increase of 122%.

Congress recognized that the complex “partnership” between private long-term care insurance, public health care assistance and consumers would require careful explanation by producers. In an faith attempt to address this need Congress inserted a mandatory producer training requirement into the Act, with the specifics to be filled in by states applying for a State Plan Amendment (SPA) to implement partnership programs.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Commissioners (NAIC) was updating the Long-Term Care Model Act including a requirement for mandatory training for long-term care producers. After updating the content outline with some references to long-term care partnership the NAIC released the 2006 Long-Term Care Insurance Model Act, recommending eight-hour initial and four-hour refresher training for LTCi producers in all states.

How many states have enacted mandatory training for long-term care producers?

As of October 1st, 2011, 43 states have implemented training requirements based upon the 2006 Model.

Four states - California, New York, Indiana and Connecticut - implemented partnership programs in the 1980's which have remained in place. These states have specific training requirements for long-term care producers and separate requirements for producers that represent partnership policies. The partnership programs in place in these states differ in many respects from partnership under the DRA. Required training is also markedly different from the standard of the 2006 Model Act.

Several other states have long-term care training requirements that have been in place for some time and are also distinct from the Act's standards.

How is this training different from Continuing Education?

Unlike with CE, insurance carriers, not state insurance commissioners, are accountable for validating that their producers comply with training requirements. This placed long-term care insurance carriers into an unfamiliar role and introduced a new training paradigm.

A key difference has to do with reciprocity, or the credit that one state offers to a producer who completes required training in another state. With CE, producers generally receive reciprocal credit from non-resident states for meeting license requirements in their resident states. Because producers resident in states that do not have an NAIC/Partnership requirement in place may be licensed in non-resident states that do have the requirement, in such it is necessary to consider whether resident producers may receive reciprocal credit in their resident state for courses completed in a non-resident state.

Aren't training requirements identical in all states, since they are based on the 2006 Model Act?

Although the 2006 NAIC Model Act provided a template for mandatory training, nearly every state that has implemented mandatory training has modified the requirements in important ways. The most important differences involve:

• whether additional state-specific content must be included in courses
• whether state approval of courses is required
• whether producers must take a course in their resident state
• how and whether reciprocity is allowed

How have states communicated their training requirements to the industry?

Most states that have implemented mandatory training requirements have done so through the action of the state's legislature. The resulting legislation usually includes details related to the training requirement.

Some states' insurance departments have communicated the training requirements directly to the industry through insurance bulletins or websites. In some cases certain elements - such as course content requirements - are communicated only to course providers or insurance carriers.

Of course, training firms are also a source of information about mandatory training, as are insurance carriers. Since insurance carriers are ultimately responsible for validating producer LTCi training compliance, their communications regarding training requirements should be considered the "gold standard."

What is ClearCert's role?

ClearCert is an independent company through which all training providers and insurance carriers in the long-term care insurance industry can participate. This offers producers the freedom to take training from any participating training provider while ensuring that represented carriers can easily validate compliance status without any action on the producer's part. Importantly, ClearCert provides a way for participating carriers to adopt identical applications of state training requirements, greatly minimizing potential confusion. Each participating carrier assigns representatives to actively work with ClearCert to ensure that training requirements are clearly and accurately stated and that producers have the largest possible selection of training courses to choose from.