With so many long-term care insurance policies to choose from, insurance companies are attempting to distinguish themselves and their products from one another. One marketing strategy is to offer policies with a laundry list of special features, discounts, riders, and expanded benefits. As insurers develop new long-term care products to appeal especially to baby boomers, they'll add all types of bells and whistles to entice you. Coverages within a long term care insurance policy can include nursing home care, home health care, assisted living, and adult day care.

When you're shopping around for long-term care insurance, try to compare the exact same level of coverage from policy to policy. You'll find that isn't always easy, because long term care policies differ enormously from company to company. Complicating matters is the fact that some companies include certain benefits in a basic policy, while others add them through riders. A rider will frequently add valuable benefits, but the key is determining which riders are worth the extra money. Watch out, though, some riders add to the cost without a corresponding increase in benefits to you.

Home health care rider

Sometimes you need to buy a rider to add home health care coverage if it's not part of a basic long-term care policy — and it's an extremely important benefit to purchase. With home health care, you may be able to avoid going to a nursing home or assisted living facility even if you're no longer able to care for yourself.

According to Kathleen Ligare, senior vice president with GE Financial Assurance's Long-Term Care Division in San Rafael, Calif., all of their policies have home health care coverage "baked" into them. She believes that home health care is a core benefit that should be included in every long-term care policy. In contrast, some insurers offer home health care coverage only as a rider to a nursing home policy.

While most people prefer to be cared for in their own home, nursing home care may be the only option in some areas. Jeff Sadler, president of SDS Inc., an insurance marketing, training, and sales firm in Ormond Beach, Fla., notes that in thinly populated states like North Dakota, you may experience great difficulty finding a quality provider of home health care in remote areas. Thus, you won't benefit from having home health care coverage. Most people, however, do need a policy that pays for home health care.

Nonforfeiture benefit rider

State insurance regulations often require that long-term care insurers offer nonforfeiture benefit riders. Furthermore, this option must be offered if you're buying a tax-qualified policy. As the name suggests, this rider assures that you won't forfeit all of your benefits even if you stop paying premiums before making a claim. However, Kim Purnell, a long-term care specialist in Palm Bay, Fla., and marketing director for Bankers United/Goldencare LTC Insurance Division, calls nonforfeiture benefit riders "a joke." You will pay premiums that are 40 percent higher (or more) for a policy with this rider. It will probably require that the policy be in force for a specified length of time before any benefit is available, your benefit will be lower or payable for a shorter period than it would be if you had continued paying the premium.

According to the United Seniors Health Cooperative, an independent consumer advocacy group, you'll pay in the neighborhood of 40 percent more for a policy with a nonforfeiture benefit rider attached to it. Ligare says all companies are required by insurance regulations to offer nonforfeiture benefit riders, but they're not purchased by many policyholders.

Shop around for a policy in your state that has the benefits you want at a cost you can afford.

Return-of-premium rider

A return-of-premium rider is considered to be a type of nonforfeiture benefit. Your estate or a designated beneficiary will be entitled to the return of some or all of your premiums if the policy isn't used during your lifetime. With certain versions of this rider, after a specified number of years, you can drop the policy altogether and receive some portion of your premiums back. Return-of-premium riders are not available from all companies nor in every state. Some experts argue its value, the rider allows people to hedge their bets by buying the insurance coverage and get money back if they decide long-term care isn't necessary. Still others contend that you're paying more for the privilege of dropping the policy at a stage in life when there's a greater risk of needing long term care.

Return-of-premium riders are "typically not a good buy," says Sadler of SDS. The cost of purchasing this rider is significant, and you'd probably earn much more by investing the extra premium money yourself.

Shared-benefit rider

A shared-benefit rider lets you extend the duration of your benefit if both spouses have coverage. If both the husband and wife have a policy, the rider lets either draw from the other's policy if their own benefits are exhausted. Ligare says GE Financial Assurance builds this "shared care" feature into certain policies without using a rider and permits couples to share one single pool of benefits. It's less expensive than buying two separate policies.

Inflation rider

No matter which long-term care policy you buy, an inflation rider is an important option. These riders help ensure that your long-term care policy payments keep pace with the escalating cost of care. Because this coverage is so important, insurance regulators in many states require any purchaser of a long-term care policy to specifically reject the inflation rider.