Where Disability Insurance is generally aimed at serving someone with a chronic long-term illness or inability to function over a period of years, a Critical Illness Insurance plan is usually for serving someone and their family with an acute injury, accident, or illness.
It helps them get through a limited period of financial stress caused by the insured inability to work while they are laid up in the home, hospital, hospice, or other care facility for a limited period of time, generally, but not always, lasting months rather than years.
For example, If the main wage earner in the family had a heart attack, or stroke and could not work for a handful of months until they got back on their feet, most of the doctor bills would be handled through their health insurance plan.
But if the insured had a large deductible like $6300 that comes in a Bronze Tier Plan, how would that be covered?
How would certain other bills get covered such as the monthly mortgage payments, the food and utilities, and day to day expenses. How would that college tuition payment for Tommy, (or Martha or Nico) get handled?
Normally that family would have to dig into their savings to pay for these things. But since the average family doesn’t have much savings to dip into, that family might have to pursue getting a second mortgage, or applying to the bank for a personal loan or charge up their credit cards to uncomfortable limits.
Rather than adding all that additional stress to what is already a difficult situation, wouldn’t it be great if one had a large bundle of discretionary funds to dip into whenever some unexpected catastrophe struck, in order to help pay all the other bills that is normally covered by the earnings that would be interrupted during such an emergency?
That is what Critical Illness Insurance is all about: To help you and your family stay on top of a medical crisis by providing a means to pay all the unpaid portions of medical bills, or non-medical bills that can become burdensome to handle during a health crisis.
As such it can act as a lifeline to get through a difficult illness with extra resources at your command. And it has the added value of acting as a lump sum death benefit to your family or loved ones if you don’t survive the critical illness.
Critical Illness policies financial benefits can typically range from $20,000 to $250,000 depending on how much you decide you want, and are typically activated when the insured obtains a diagnosis and a second opinion from two licensed Medical Doctors stating that the insured has one of the critical illnesses covered under the policy. They also typically will not be offered to individuals who are older than 65 years old.
Some Critical Illness policies only cover one, two or three named illnesses, such as “Cancer insurance" or “Heart Attack, Cancer and Stroke insurance".
Whereas other Critical Illness policies covers a broader spectrum of named illnesses such as the following: Cancer, Heart Attack, Stroke, Coronary Artery Disease. Kidney Failure, Fulminant Viral Hepatitis ( massive necrosis of the liver leading to liver failure), Major Organ Transplant (with a specific list of organs such as Kidney, Lungs, Liver, Heart, and Bone Marrow), Paralysis and Paraplegia, Multiple Sclerosis, Primary Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, Blindness, Heart Valve Replacement, Loss of Hearing/Deafness, Surgery to Aorta, Loss of Speach, Alzheimer’s Disease / Irreversible Organic Degenerative Brain Disorders, Major Burns ( 3rd degree burns covering at least 20% of an insured’s body surface), Coma, Terminal Illness, Motor Neurone Disease, AIDS Due To Blood Transfusion, Parkinson’s Disease, Chronic Liver Disease, Chronic Lung Disease, Major Head Trauma, Aplastic Anaemia, Muscular Dystrophy, Benign Brain Tumor,
Encephalitis, Poliomyelitis, Brain Surgery (Bur Hole and brain surgery as a result of an accident is excluded., Bacterial Meningitis, Other Serious Coronary Artery Disease, Apallic Syndrome, AIDS Cover of Medical Staff, & Full-Blown AIDS.
If your family has limited resources to survive a health crisis in your family, it would be both proactive and wise to consider obtaining both a Health Insurance Plan and a Critical Illness Plan for you and your family, when you consider your health insurance needs.
If you have any further questions or would like to obtain a quote for Critical Illness Insurance, please feel free to contact me. I am ready to assist you. Contact Martin Miller at 707-540-0211
