Four insurers have asked Maryland regulators to approve long-term care insurance rate increases that would raise premiums for an estimated 12,600 individual policyholders statewide. MedAmerica Insurance Company is seeking the steepest single increase, 242%, on a policy covering 82 Maryland residents, while John Hancock Life Insurance Company is requesting increases ranging from 27% to 142% across 19 different policy types. Maryland’s insurance regulator held a public hearing on the four filings on September 17 and has not yet ruled on any of them.
What Maryland’s rate hearing leaves unanswered: A 242% or 27%-to-142% premium increase would reshape a retiree’s withdrawal math, exactly the job The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner’s RMD schedule and withdrawal-order tools are built for. Run the RMD schedule against a possible LTC increase →
Four Filings, One Regulator, A September Hearing
Four companies filed for long-term care rate increases now under review by the Maryland Insurance Administration: John Hancock Life Insurance Company, MedAmerica Insurance Company, Transamerica Life Insurance Company and Union Security Insurance Company, according to the agency’s own notice of its September 17, 2026 hearing. That hearing ran from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern over a virtual format, and Maryland’s process calls for each company to explain its rationale, for the Insurance Administration to weigh the request against state law, and for policyholders and advocates to comment before any final ruling, per the same notice. Maryland Insurance Commissioner Marie Grant and the department’s senior actuary, Jin Shin, are the officials overseeing that review, according to a report on the hearing, and Shin told the hearing regulators would need roughly a couple of months to complete their analysis before ruling.
The Two Largest Percentage Requests, By The Numbers
MedAmerica’s request is the single steepest: a 242% increase, phased in over several years with no single annual jump exceeding 15%, covering 82 Maryland policyholders on a policy the company stopped selling in 2016 but still administers for existing customers, according to the same report. John Hancock’s filing spans 19 different policy plan types, with proposed increases averaging 27% to 142% depending on the specific policy, also capped at 15% a year if approved. The other two insurers in the docket are seeking smaller increases: Union Security Insurance Company requested 101.1%, and Transamerica Life Insurance Company requested 39.7%. Combined, the four filings would touch roughly 12,600 individual long-term care policyholders across Maryland, the report states, though the Insurance Administration’s own hearing notice does not break the total down by company. John Hancock’s request is not a first-time filing for these policy forms: a company actuarial memorandum on file with the Maryland Insurance Administration for the same LTC-02 MD and BSC-02 MD forms lists prior state-approved increases in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2020, indicating this round continues a pattern of periodic increases on decades-old policies rather than a one-time request.
What “Individual” Long-Term Care Coverage Means Here
The Insurance Administration’s own hearing notice specifies that all four rate requests apply to Maryland’s individual long-term care insurance market, meaning policies people bought directly from an insurer rather than through an employer or association group plan. A policyholder whose long-term care coverage came through a former employer’s group plan is not covered by this particular docket, even though a hearing spanning four companies at once can read like a blanket long-term care story. That individual-market label is also why one review process can span such different policies in a single sitting, from MedAmerica’s line that stopped taking new customers in 2016 to John Hancock’s 19 still-active plan types.
Why Insurers Say They Need More, And What A Ruling Could Look Like
The insurers point to pressures common to long-term care rate cases nationally: policyholders are using their benefits more than actuaries originally projected, they are living longer while doing so, and the interest income insurers counted on when they priced these decades-old policies has not materialized as assumed, according to the report on the hearing. Maryland’s regulator does not have to approve a request as filed. In January, the same agency approved a 32.25% increase for Continental Casualty Company after that insurer had requested 212.3%, a precedent cited in the same report as a sign regulators frequently cut these requests well below what companies originally ask for rather than granting them outright. Nancy Carr, communications director for AARP Maryland, urged policyholders not to panic and noted that reducing future coverage, rather than paying an approved increase in full, is one alternative insurers are typically required to offer. Because both MedAmerica’s and John Hancock’s requests are proposed to phase in at no more than 15% in any single year, even a fully approved 242% increase would not land on a policyholder’s bill all at once; it would arrive in stages over several renewal cycles, which changes the near-term budgeting question from whether a household can absorb the full 242% to whether it can absorb this year’s capped installment of it.
What A Policyholder Can Do While The Decision Is Pending
The Insurance Administration’s window for written public comment on the four filings closed September 24, a week after the hearing, and the agency has not announced when it will rule. A long-term care policyholder facing one of these increases is not required to simply wait for that ruling to plan around it: once any increase is finalized, insurers typically must let a policyholder choose among paying the higher premium, reducing future benefits to hold the premium closer to its current level, or letting the policy lapse with whatever paid-up, reduced benefit it has already accrued. Betty Lagundo, a Maryland long-term care policyholder of more than two decades quoted in the same report, is among the roughly 12,600 people now waiting to see which of Maryland’s four pending rate requests the Insurance Administration ultimately allows, and by how much.
The Retirement Math Behind A Possible Premium Jump
Maryland has not yet ruled on MedAmerica’s 242% request or John Hancock’s 27%-to-142% range, and a decision could take a couple of months, according to the state’s senior actuary. Whatever percentage regulators eventually approve becomes a bigger annual bill sitting on top of whatever a retiree already draws from savings each year to cover living costs, and neither the rate filings nor the public hearing addresses how a household recalculates that withdrawal once a new premium is set.
The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner’s RMD schedule calculator and account withdrawal order set out which savings source absorbs a bigger premium first, without upsetting the rest of a household’s tax plan.
Compare the account withdrawal order against a bigger premium in The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner.
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the primary sources linked above.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
