Insurers paid $8.7 billion in U.S. long-term care insurance claims in 2016 — 6.1 percent more than they paid in 2015.
The number of people collecting private LTCI benefits from the insurers increased 7.7 percent, to 280,000.
The American Association for Long Term Care Insurance (AALTCI) is reporting those figures in a summary of results from its latest LTCI issuer survey.
Related: AALTCI posts LTCI claim data
Projections from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show the United States spent a total of about $260 billion on nursing home care, home health care and other types of paid long-term care in 2016.
A comparison of the AALTCI figures with the government long-term care spending estimates suggests that private insurers may have accounted for about 3.3 percent of U.S. long-term care spending last year.
