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Click here for more background on Wednesday’s hearing.

Becker will now face West Hartford Town Council Minority Leader Denise Berard Hall to fill the seat being vacated by Beth Bye.

Watch our prior coverage on the race to learn more about the candidates:

Profile of Becker and Schmitt
Denise Hall Profile

By George Gombossy, CTwatchdog.com

In these days of tight mortgage lending standards, getting your home refinanced can be a real challenge, even if you have equity and good credit.

Tim McCarroll of Cromwell faces an additional hurdle: Connecticut Natural Gas damaged his outstanding credit rating by incorrectly telling credit rating agencies that McCarroll was a deadbeat.

And when McCarroll contacted CNG and the state attorney general's office for help, no one appeared to get overly worked up about the problem until McCarroll asked for my help, and a public relations mess was in the offing.

It was only after I sent McCarroll's email to CNG spokesman John Dobos Jr. and to the PR staff at the attorney general's office that CNG apologized and promised to work quickly to clean up the mess it created.

It was only after McCarroll tried to refinance his home through Webster Bank that he learned a collections agency was trying to locate him for allegedly failing to pay a CNG bill. The mortgage officer told a stunned McCarroll that because of that black mark, his $200,000 mortgage would end up costing an extra $4,000 to refinance. No one had tried to contact him about the bill, McCarroll said.

He immediately called CNG, where the service representative checked a database and quickly established that McCarroll was never a CNG customer and that someone with a similar name had the account and had apparently used McCarroll's social security number.

He was also told that is a frequent problem because CNG has so many new customers it doesn't have the time to check everyone's social security number to make sure it belongs to the new customer, since state regulators require quick hookups.

The customer service representative refused to provide McCarroll with free credit monitoring to make sure the problem doesn't crop up again, but did agree to start the process of clearing his credit report.

"I would love to prevent this for future people or myself," he wrote me. "There is no way to prevent this unless the companies opening these accounts are held responsible. I have no idea now if someone has utilities on using my SS Number and wouldn't find this out until they stop payment and some company puts it to collections, then it hits my credit report – it's not like a credit card or line of credit, which hits right away."

After I notified Dobos that I was pursuing this case, McCarroll's issue got the attention it should have had in the first place. He was given an apology, free credit report checks and CNG promised to move quickly to mitigate the damage to his credit rating.

Dobos did not challenge McCarroll's version of events and said the customer representative would receive retraining.

"CNG has policies and procedures in place designed to detect the warning signs — or ‘red flags’ — of identity theft in our day-to-day operations," Dobos wrote me. "Our procedures have changed and developed over the years and our vigilance in protecting customers has improved. We have incorporated new available technology and internet products that now allow us to conduct identity checks on every new account."

But he said "identity issues still occur on accounts, particularly if they were opened in prior years when identity theft was not as prevalent. When a customer brings to our attention a potential identify theft, we work with the customer to verify errors, issue them a letter acknowledging any error, and submit corrected information to the credit bureaus."

A good way to avoid this problem is to check your credit reports at least once a year – it’s free.

He will respond to as many inquiries and complaints as time permits. Please check out ctWatchdog.com for other consumer, health and finance tips.

How will you pay for long term care? The sad fact is that most people don’t know the answer to that question. But a solution is available.

As baby boomers leave their careers behind, long term care insurance will become very important in their financial strategies. The reasons to get an LTC policy after age 50 are very compelling.

Your premium payments buy you access to a large pool of money which can be used to pay for long term care costs. By paying for LTC out of that pool of money, you can preserve your retirement savings and income.

The cost of assisted living or nursing home care alone could motivate you to pay the premiums. Genworth Financial conducts a respected annual Cost of Care Survey to gauge the price of long term care in the U.S. The 2010 report found that in 2010, the median annual cost of a private room in a nursing home is $75,190 or $206 per day – $14,965 more than it was in 2005.

A private one-bedroom unit in an assisted living facility has a median cost of $3,185 a month – which is 12% higher than it was in 2009.

The median payment to a non-Medicare certified, state-licensed home health aide is $19 in 2010, up 2.7% from 2009.[1]

Can you imagine spending an extra $30-80K out of your retirement savings in a year? What if you had to do it for more than one year?

AARP notes that approximately 60% of people over age 65 will require some kind of long term care during their lifetimes.[2]

Why procrastinate? The earlier you opt for LTC coverage, the cheaper the premiums. This is why many people purchase it before they retire. Those in poor health or over the age of 80 are frequently ineligible for coverage.

What it pays for. Some people think LTC coverage just pays for nursing home care. That’s inaccurate. It can pay for a wide variety of nursing, social, and rehabilitative services at home and away from home, for people with a chronic illness or disability or people who just need assistance bathing, eating or dressing.[3]

Choosing a DBA. That stands for Daily Benefit Amount – the maximum amount that your LTC plan will pay per day for care in a nursing home facility. You can choose a Daily Benefit Amount when you pay for your LTC coverage, and you can also choose the length of time that you may receive the full DBA on a daily basis. The DBA typically ranges from a few dozen dollars to hundreds of dollars. Some of these plans offer you “inflation protection” at enrollment, meaning that every few years, you will have the chance to buy additional coverage and get compounding – so your pool of money can grow.

The Medicare misconception. Too many people think Medicare will pick up the cost of long term care. Medicare is not long term care insurance. Medicare will only pay for the first 100 days of nursing home care, and only if 1) you are getting skilled care and 2) you go into the nursing home right after a hospital stay of at least 3 days. Medicare also covers limited home visits for skilled care, and some hospice services for the terminally ill. That’s all.[2]

Now, Medicaid can actually pay for long term care – if you are destitute. Are you willing to wait until you are broke for a way to fund long term care? Of course not. LTC insurance provides a way to do it.

Why not look into this? You may have heard that LTC insurance is expensive compared with some other forms of policies. But the annual premiums (about as much as you’d spend on a used car from the late 1990s) are nothing compared to real-world LTC costs.[4]

Ask your insurance advisor or financial advisor about some of the LTC choices you can explore – while many Americans have life, health and disability insurance, that’s not the same thing as long term care coverage.

1 genworth.com/content/etc/medialib/genworth_v2/pdf/ltc_cost_of_care.Par.85518.File.dat/Executive%20Summary_gnw.pdf [4/10]

2 - aarp.org/families/caregiving/caring_help/what_does_long_term_care_cost.html [11/11/08]

3 - pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/article/long-term-care-insurance_SP/ [11/11/08]

4 - longtermcare.gov/LTC/Main_Site/Paying_LTC/Private_Programs/LTC_Insurance/index.aspx [6/25/09]

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