Few small companies think they can afford to offer long term care insurance, and many doubt whether employees want the benefit.
The long term care insurance division at John Hancock, Boston, a unit of Manulife Financial Corp., Toronto, has based those conclusions on results from telephone interviews of about 500 benefits decision makers at companies with 10 to 1,000 workers.
About 20% of the participating employers already offer LTC insurance benefits.
When researchers asked participating employers without LTC benefits about their reasoning, 66% cited concerns about cost, and 63% cited an apparent lack of employee interest.
In addition, 33% said they thought adopting a plan would be too time-consuming.