As long-term-care-insurance costs climb, families are turning to continuing-care retirement communities as an alternative.

 Long-term-care insurance generally pays for home care, assisted living or skilled nursing when a policyholder suffers from dementia or needs help with at least two "activities of daily living," such as bathing or dressing.

 But insurers have been battered by low interest rates and expensive claims, leading a few large firms to quit selling new policies in the past few years. Others have jacked up rates on existing policyholders.

That has led some families and financial advisers to look for other ways to hedge against the potential for late-life custodial care that can decimate decades of ......

Dementia is a health problem which particularly (but not exclusively) strikes the older adult population and, because of the “greying of America” that’s been going on, will only increase in prevalence over the coming years. Increasing age, of course, is a major risk factor for developing dementia.

The basic definition of dementia includes:

1) The development of multiple cognitive deficits manifested by both:

a) Memory impairment (impaired ability to learn new information or to recall previously learned information); and

b) One (or more) of the following cognitive disturbances:

i) Aphasia (language disturbance),

ii) Apraxia (impaired ability to carry out motor activities despite intact motor function),

iii) .........