Editing a monthly magazine is always a gamble, but never more so than in the past year. The market collapse and the recession have wreaked havoc on your businesses at a stunning pace, and I'm always wondering what will happen between the time these issues go to press and when they land in your mailbox. Yes, we keep you up to speed on our website; but even so, I've had many a bad dream about printing the financial planning equivalent of that famously wrong headline, "Dewey defeats Truman."

In fact, as this issue goes to press, Bernard Madoff has been hustled off to jail, and the stock market is in its third day of a rally. It's great to see arrows pointing up for a change. At the beginning of the downturn, I vowed only to look at my portfolio when the market had closed above where it opened—and not to change my allocations even then. So I looked at it this week, and wow. I've lost a lot of money. I'm hoping that by the time you read this, my savings will be farther along the road to recovery.

But this week's surge, from my vantage today, still looks like a dead-cat bounce. Around me, people are going about their business (or lack thereof) as usual. For Financial Planning, that means preparing our annual issue on healthcare. Despite downturns, meltdowns, crashes and layoffs, life goes on. And healthcare costs continue to rise, affecting clients' ability to run their businesses, save and retire. These costs affect you in the very same way.

It's important not to lose focus of the fact that financial planning covers much more than the stock ticker. Clients' expenses and risks can and must be managed. In fact, managing health risks is more important than ever, as people have fewer resources to throw at problems that may emerge.

This is the reasoning behind this month's cover story. Now is the time to learn about healthcare planning; it's a way to get proactive about your business. Yes, we may see healthcare reform coming, but the way the economy is going, I doubt that will mean the end of private coverage. At its most generous, any publicly mandated plan is likely to be pretty basic and your clients will want additional care. You can be part of the solution.

We also have an important feature this month on long-term-care insurance. Although many planners believe that this type of insurance is an essential element of retirement planning, sales are way down. Small wonder, if you look at insurance companies: Their reserves and their stocks have plummeted. Premiums are going up, too. So we wondered: Is this insurance still worth buying? Senior Editor Donald Jay Korn spoke to advisors as well as industry experts, and the answer is a qualified yes.

—Marion Asnes, editor in chief

Marion Asnes became the editor of Financial Planning magazine in 2005. Financial Planning is the leading professional magazine for independent financial planners and has a circulation of 115,000. The topics covered on its pages range from industry news and trends to sophisticated discussions of portfolio management, estate planning and philanthropy. Asnes is the first female editor in chief of Financial Planning in the magazine's 38-year history.

Before joining Financial Planning, Asnes was a senior editor at Money, participating in the magazine’s coverage of personal finance, retirement, investment and health care issues. Her areas of expertise included retirement and 401(k) planning, asset allocation, estate planning and the particular financial challenges faced by women. In addition to her regular editorial duties at Money, Asnes co-edited Money for Women, an annual special issue that was featured exclusively on “The Today Show” on NBC.

A 27-year service journalism veteran, Asnes has contributed to a long list of national publications including Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, More, Mirabella, Working Woman and Lear's. She has spoken at conferences and symposia ranging from the National Endowment for Financial Education’s Retirement Summit to the National Football League’s Rookie Symposium. In addition, Asnes has appeared on national television programs as an expert on financial and economic topics including CNN, CNN Headline News, NBC's Today, ABC's 20/20, PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.

Asnes graduated with a B.A. from Cornell University.