(MONEY Magazine) – The runaway price of long-term nursing care can be a real worry for millions of older Americans, not to mention for their children. The average nursing- home stay lasts more than a year -- 408 days -- and costs nearly $27,000. Worse, that expense is expected to double in the next 30 years. These frightening statistics help explain why the latest marketing wrinkle in life insurance is a series of riders specifically designed to defray the cost of nursing-home care. For a 2% to 10% higher premium, the insurer will pay part of your death benefit each month until the benefit is exhausted or a preset maximum is reached. If you expire before your benefit does, the remainder goes to your heirs. The companies tout this as progress. ''For people who own life insurance, we believe this is the most efficient and economical way of providing for nursing-home care,'' says Stephen Lewis, president of First Penn-Pacific Life of Oak Brook, Ill. At First Penn, for example, a nonsmoking 55-year-old man can buy a $100,000 policy for $2,400 a year plus an extra $55 for the rider ($2,455 total). Should he land in a nursing home for more than six months, the policy will pay 2% of the death benefit ($2,000) monthly for the next 50 months. National Travelers Life, Security-Connecticut and ITT Life offer broadly similar options. These riders, however, often don't take effect immediately; and sometimes they put a limit on how much you can collect. ITT Life, for instance, requires you to pay into the program for three years first, and then delivers only up to 48% of the death benefit. Some other insurers require that you be in a hospital first or spend three to six months in the nursing home before you can start collecting. But the fatal fault of these riders, says James Hunt of the National Insurance Consumer Organization in Alexandria, Va., is that they are overpriced. As an alternative, try coupling a straight universal life policy with separate nursing-home insurance. The 55-year-old nonsmoker cited earlier could buy $100,000 life coverage from no-commission USAA of San Antonio for only $1,800 a year. With the $573.60 left over (assuming a total cost of $2,455, the same as with First Penn), he could purchase Aetna's top-of-the- line nursing-care policy, which would kick in after only 20 days and pay $3,600 a month for six years. And his $100,000 death benefit would be untouched. ''The problem with these riders,'' says Hunt, ''is that anything added on to a life insurance policy is usually a gimmick.''