Anyone who quotes you a price for long-term care insurance without asking several questions first is guessing. The premium is assembled from a handful of inputs, and you control four of them.

The two inputs you do not control

Your age when the policy starts. Age at purchase generally sets the pricing for the life of the policy, not your age when you claim. Waiting costs money in a way that compounds.

Your health. These policies are medically underwritten. Health affects both the price and whether a policy is offered at all — see what can disqualify an application.

The four you do control

1. The benefit amount. How much the policy pays per day or per month. Higher benefit, higher premium, in roughly proportional fashion.

2. The benefit period. How long payments can continue, or the total pool of money available. A shorter period costs meaningfully less and still covers the majority of claims, which is a trade-off worth discussing honestly.

3. The elimination period. The days you cover yourself after a claim is approved, before benefits begin. It works like a deductible measured in days. Lengthen it and the premium falls; you are agreeing to fund the first stretch yourself.

4. Inflation protection. Whether the benefit grows over time. This is the option people most often decline to save money and most often regret. If you buy at 55 and claim at 85, a benefit that never grew will have lost much of its usefulness.

Why we do not publish an average

Averages in this product mislead more than they help, because the spread between a modest policy and a comprehensive one is enormous and the inputs above are not comparable between households. A figure you read on a page is not a quote and should not be treated as one.

The other half of the question

What you are weighing the premium against is the cost of care itself, paid from your own money, for an unknown length of time — because Medicare does not pay for ongoing custodial care. That is the comparison that actually matters, and it is worth doing with real numbers for your situation rather than national ones.

Read next: whether the cover is worth it for a household like yours, when to buy, and how premiums are treated for tax.