Compares the long-term-care funding paths you declare: you declare the horizon in years, a self-fund annual set-aside, a hybrid lump premium, and a traditional annual premium; the page computes each path's simple-sum total over the horizon and names the option with the unique smallest total, or reports a tie, with a full trace. Every input here is yours: the page holds no policy record, no health datum, no market data, and no clock.
Declare the horizon and the three candidate funding amounts. These are your declarations: the page never verifies them against a policy or a quote. The simple-sum method is the declared method: self-fund total is self_fund_annual times horizon_years, the hybrid total is the declared lump, and the traditional total is traditional_annual times horizon_years, each rounded half-up to 2 decimal places (a declared convention). The cheapest option is the unique smallest total.
The verdict is CHEAPEST_IDENTIFIED when exactly one option carries the smallest total; the opposite verdict path is TIE_IDENTIFIED, where two or three options share the smallest total, cheapest is null, and the trace names the tied options. Discounting at a declared rate and a sensitivity note are follow-on arithmetic outside this version, and the output is a ranking of your declared totals, not a recommendation: funding and coverage decisions belong to you and your advisers.