Life expectancy sets the horizon of a life care plan: how many years each recurring item is carried and how many replacement cycles each piece of equipment gets. The planner starts from published population life tables and applies any condition-specific adjustment only when a qualified physician supports it.
Every life care plan and medical cost projection states the horizon over which costs are projected. The question is contested most often in spinal cord injury, severe brain injury, and cerebral palsy cases, where the defense may argue for a shortened expectancy and the plaintiff for population norms.
A life table is a population average. A life care planner is not qualified to shorten or lengthen the evaluee's expectancy on the planner's own authority; any departure from the published table must rest on a physician's opinion in the record. Expectancy also changes as the person ages and as treatment evolves, which is one reason a plan update restates the horizon.
Reliance on published government life tables is routine and rarely challenged. Disputes concern the adjustment: whether the physician who reduced expectancy had a sufficient basis, and whether the planner presented the alternative horizons transparently.
No. The planner adopts the published population figure unless a qualified physician has opined that the condition changes it. The planner documents which basis was used and, where the record contains competing opinions, may present the plan at more than one horizon.
A rated age is an underwriter's estimate of the age a person's health profile corresponds to for annuity pricing. It is used in structured settlements and Medicare set-aside allocations. It is a pricing device, not a medical opinion, and a life care plan for litigation does not rely on it for the plan horizon.
Each item with a replacement interval is carried for the number of cycles that fit within the horizon. A wheelchair replaced every five years over a forty-year horizon appears eight times; over a twenty-year horizon, four. The horizon therefore drives the total even for one-time and periodic items.