What Do Critical Illness Plans Cover?

When diagnosed with a serious illness, critical illness benefits can provide financial support during a very difficult time. Many people who experience a critical illness face serious financial difficulties as they recover. And while most medical plans provide coverage for hospital and medical expenses arising from these critical illnesses, many of the expenses are not covered.

 

An affordable, flexible solution

 

Critical Illness Insurance from Guardian complements your client’s medical and disability income coverage, while staying within their budget. Critical illness coverage can meet the financial needs of employees, and can make a real difference attracting and retaining employees. 

Many brokers who include critical illness insurance in their portfolios are realizing more consultative relationships with clients leading to new, more prosperous revenue streams.

 

What does critical illness insurance cover?

 

With Guardian Critical Illness benefits your clients can choose a plan that fits the unique needs of their workforce – whether 2 employees or 200,000.

Your clients can select from a list of options and riders to enhance their plan with features such as:

• Hospital coverage for other illness or injuries. Pays up to $500 per day (10 days per year) if the insured employee is in the hospital for any condition other than a listed critical illness.
• Wellness benefit payment. Pays $25 - $100 for completing certain routine wellness procedures or screenings, including completion of a smoking-cessation or weight-loss program.
• Available caregiver rider. Helps defray the cost of being a caregiver if an employee’s parent is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
• Optional occupational HIV/hepatitis coverage. Covers the first of either illness at 100%, no recurrence

 

 

 

 

Plus they can select to offer a benefit of up to $50,000 should a covered employee suffer any of 30 major illnesses, including:

 

• Cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one out of every two men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. For women that statistic is one in three.¹ An estimated 1,665,540 people will be diagnosed with new cases of cancer in 2014.²
• Heart attack. Each year in the U.S., more than 420,000 people have heart attack outside of the hospital and need emergency medical services.³
• Stroke. About 795,000 Americans each year suffer a new or recurrent stroke. That means, on average, a stroke occurs every 40 seconds.⁴
• Major organ transplant. In 2013, 28,953 people received organ transplants. That’s 79 people who receive organ transplants every day. And the percentage of recipients who were still living 5-years after their transplant is remarkable.⁵
  • Kidney (deceased donor): 83.4%
  • Kidney (living donor): 92%
  • Heart: 76.8%
  • Liver (deceased donor): 74.3%
  • Liver (living donor): 81.3%
  • Lung: 55.2%
• End stage renal failure. End stage renal failure is when the kidneys are no longer able to work at a level needed for day-to-day life. The most common causes in the U.S. are diabetes and high blood pressure. These conditions can affect your kidneys. In 2009 (the most recent statistics available), there were 571,414 people living with kidney failure.⁶
• Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). Nearly 395,000 coronary artery bypass grafts are perfomed in the U.S. every year.⁷ CABG is the most common type of open-heart surgery in the United States. Although symptoms can recur, many people remain symptom-free for as long as 10 to 15 years. CABG also may lower your risk of having a heart attack and help you live longer.⁸
• Arteriosclerosis. Arterosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, is a condition in which plaque builds up inside the arteries. Plaque is made of cholesterol, fatty substances, cellular waste products, calcium and fibrin (a clotting material in the blood). More than 15,800,000 Americans have known coronary artery disease.⁹
• Parkinson’s. As many as one million Americans live with Parkinson's disease, which is more than the combined number of people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and Lou Gehrig's disease.¹⁰
• Alzheimer’s. Every 67 seconds someone in the United States develops Alzheimer's. More than 5 million Americans are living with the disease.¹¹
• Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MS is thought to affect more than 2.3 million people worldwide.¹² In the U.S., 350,000 to 500,000 people have been diagnosed with MS.¹³
• ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Approximately 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year. The incidence of ALS is two per 100,000 people, and it is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans may have the disease at any given time. Although the life expectancy of an ALS patient averages about two to five years from the time of diagnosis, this disease is variable and many people live with quality for five years and more. More than half of all patients live more than three years after diagnosis and about twenty percent of people with ALS live five years or more.¹⁴
• Severe burns. Most severe burns happen in the home. Each year about 450,000 burn injuries require medical treatment and 40,000 hospitalizations are related to burn Injury.¹⁵
• Paralysis. According to a study initiated by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, there are nearly 1 in 50 people living with paralysis -- approximately 6 million people. That's the same number of people as the combined populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. And that number is nearly 33% higher than previous estimates showed.¹⁶

 

Coverage for the whole family

 

In addition, children are covered for a wide range of illnesses and conditions including, Cerebral Palsy, Cleft Lip/Palet, Club Foot, Cystic Fibrosis, Down’s Syndrome, Muscular Dystrophy, Spina Bifida, Type 1 Diabetes, and others. There’s no additional cost, and no health questions are required.

 

Contact a Sales Representative today

 

We'll help you and your clients design the best critical illness insurance solution for their needs.