GoWealthPro’s Dinesh Sharma presented on the topic of healthcare. He covered different healthcare topics: research on healthcare trends, long-term care trends, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act.

When creating a retirement plan for high-net-worth clients, many advisers don’t put a lot of their own effort into calculating health care costs. After all, those clients are wealthy and well-insured, and in many larger firms, doing the math — and/or getting the commission — is somebody else’s job.
Retiree Healthcare Planner from GoWealthPro attempts to answer the biggest question on most retirees’ minds: How much should I set aside for health care expenses in retirement? Rather than going by average-life-expectancy data, GoWealthPro’s Retiree Healthcare Planner uses individual-client data, including age, health history and family health history, as well as information on that person’s level of physical activity and whether he or she smokes, to get a sense of what health care costs might be in retirement. Clients as young as 40 can use the program.
By Darla Mercado and Davis D. Janowski
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Approximately 60% of advisors include healthcare planning as part of their overall retirement planning process with clients, but advisors often lack information to make accurate judgments to address clients’ health concerns. The Retiree Healthcare Planner developed by GoWealthPro, a MA-based company, estimates both the client’s longevity and geographically adjusted healthcare expenses. The planner was developed using publicly available health statistics and input from doctors and specialists who helped as- sess risk factors. The tool asks clients to input approximately 15 pieces of information (e.g., smoking, activity level, weight, family- health history) and from those, it projects the clients’ expected longevity. In addition, the planner takes into account the timing of healthcare costs, weighting costs more heavily toward the end of the clients’ life. As such, the output gives year-by-year estimates of healthcare costs, allowing advisors to match cash flow against costs. Such a tool could help advisors better navigate their older clients’ health concerns by making sure the client has adequately funded their healthcare, given their individual situation.