Connecticut Lawmakers Move to Rein In Long-Term Care Insurance Rate Hikes After Years of Inaction

Hartford, Connecticut — A bill that would put guardrails on skyrocketing long-term care insurance premiums cleared Connecticut’s Aging Committee this week, moving one step closer to becoming law after years of failed attempts to protect seniors from sudden, massive rate increases.

The measure would require the state Department of Insurance to hold a public hearing whenever an insurer requests a rate hike exceeding 10 percent, and notify state lawmakers at least two weeks before any hearing takes place. It would also require insurance companies to disclose to consumers upfront — before they sign — that their premiums could rise significantly over time.

The numbers behind the bill tell a stark story. A 2025 review of state insurance filings found that more than 17,000 Connecticut policyholders had been hit with premium increases of 50 percent or more over a five-year span. Some saw hikes as high as 174 percent. One resident told lawmakers her monthly payment had climbed from $85.50 in 1994 to $838.46 today.

“I bought this policy to protect myself in my later years, and now I cannot afford it,” said Amelia Smith of Windsor, who testified before the committee. “My utility bills are going up, and I can no longer travel to visit my son.”

Nearly 100,000 residents in Connecticut carry long-term care insurance — policies designed to cover skilled in-home care, rehabilitation, assisted living, and nursing home stays. For many of them, the products that were supposed to provide security in old age have become an unpredictable financial burden.

Major carriers including Genworth Financial, MetLife, and Transamerica have requested multiple rate increases in Connecticut in recent years. In 2022, Genworth raised premiums for more than 2,000 Connecticut policyholders by an average of 97 percent. The state Insurance Department approved the requests.

A bill that keeps getting narrowed

Legislators stripped out a tax deduction provision that had been included in an earlier version, after residents urged them to drop it — the same provision had sunk a similar bill last year. The slimmed-down version now heads to the Insurance and Real Estate Committee for further consideration.

Rep. Mitch Bolinsky, R-Newtown, framed the move pragmatically. “We want to open the conversation,” he said. “The bill has actually been neutralized so we can have a good beginning conversation with the Insurance Committee and hopefully move this forward.”

Sen. Jorge Cabrera, who chairs the Insurance and Real Estate Committee, said he’s open to the dialogue. “At the very least, transparency is really important for people to know what they’re getting into when they buy the product,” he said.

The broader stakes aren’t limited to Connecticut. Across the country, cost is the defining factor families weigh when choosing long-term care, and the financial unpredictability of private insurance is increasingly pushing families toward Medicaid-funded nursing home care as a fallback. Advocates say that without meaningful reform at the state level, more seniors will find themselves paying into policies for decades only to face a difficult choice: keep paying or lose everything they put in.

“We have a really serious problem,” Bolinsky said, “and it’s one the legislature hasn’t done a particularly robust job at addressing, because it involves some really, really tough decisions.”

The Aging Committee said it hopes to pass some reforms this session and pursue broader changes in 2027.