Cancer Insurance Information

Supplemental Health Insurance – is it right for you?

There are so many different forms of supplemental health insurance plans currently available that when it comes to cancer insurance, or sometimes referred to as critical illness insurance, it isn’t always clear whether or not you will benefit from the type of coverage it has to offer. With that we’ve broken down some things to think about when choosing.

The concept of cancer insurance is quite simple. Should you ever be faced with a cancer diagnosis, you will know that you will have financial assistance for the additional costs associated with your cancer treatment, regardless of any other insurance you may also have. This type of plan supplements the additional out-of-pocket expenses and services that may or may not be covered by your health insurance or other policies – like time off of work.

When deciding whether or not you need this additional protection, consider the statistics released by the National Institute of Health regarding the overall costs of the disease in the United States in 2007. In that year, it was estimated to be $219.2 billion. Of that total, medical costs made up approximately $89 billion, but an additional $18.2 billion resulted from lost productivity costs.

Furthermore, the American Cancer Society says that the chances of developing cancer at some time in your life are 1 in 3 if you are a woman, and 1 in 2 if you are a man. As you age, the risks increase, as individuals over the age of 55 make up 77 percent of all cancer patients.

For almost all patients, the largest financial burden that can be faced is that relating to the treatment of cancer. Even those patients who are already covered by a health insurance policy will face co-payments, deductibles, and annual or lifetime caps that will leave them with a significant expense that will need to be paid out of their own pockets.

Medical expenses include costs such as the charges from hospitals and doctors (including those out of the network of your health insurance), treatments, medications, surgeries, and experimental treatments.

Furthermore, it should be recognized that while the medical expenses are significant, the expenses not directly relating to medical treatments will also have a very large financial impact on an individual or family.

Nonmedical costs include expenses such as the loss of income, deductibles, lodging (for example, if your treatment is far from home), food, transportation, car payments, utility bills, household assistance, and child care.

As you consider supplemental health insurance, you may want to review your health insurance policy, as most conventional health plans will only provide payments for the costs of the medical treatments and not the nonmedical expenses that will occur during that time.

Other types of supplemental health insurance also include accident insurance.

You might have heard of it through companies like Aflac or Colonial, get paid if you break a bone, this type of plan is called accident insurance. It works just like cancer insurance in that it pays you in the event of an accident (some companies pay for both on the job or off the job incidents), and you can use the money as you see fit. Many that have high deductibles on their health insurance, are self employed, have children in sports or construction type jobs will benefit from having this type of plan the most.

Also, accident insurance plans usually have a life benefit in them as well as a disability rider option. In the event you can’t work due to an accident, there’s a daily benefit that will pay you, just like a disability policy would. There are some differences though and usually it’s the amount they pay out. Disability insurance is based on a percentage of your wages where accident insurance is a set amount. The other difference between disability and accident insurance with a disability rider is the cost, usually accident insurance is a lot cheaper than traditional disability insurance.

All in all, supplemental health plans help fill in the gaps that traditional health plans will leave. As well as give you other coverages that traditional plans would not even pay to begin with, as an example: cost of travel or life insurance benefits.