Critical Illness Insurance - From The Beginning


Many households are carrying more personal debt than ever. In fact, debt is at an all time high. With mortgages on depreciating homes, families are taking out home equity loans and second mortgages to get by. The financial obligation is that mounting higher and higher is just a crisis waiting to happen. Most Americans are just a heart attack, cancer or stroke away from financial disaster.

Unfortunately, illnesses don’t discriminate. Within the next four minutes, fourteen Americans will have a heart attack or a stroke. Ten more will be diagnosed with cancer. Five families will be forced to declare bankruptcy because of a medically related financial hardship. A family has an eighty-three percent chance of either the husband or the wife having a heart attack, stroke or being diagnosed with cancer. With those odds, what are your plans? Are you ready to take that kind of devastation?

In 1967, Dr. Christian Barnard was recognized for performing the first successful human heart transplant. On the same team of surgeons was his brother, Dr. Marius Barnard, whom came up with a concept in 1983 called Critical Illness Insurance. Due to the modern miracle of medical progress patients are no longer dying. He developed an insurance product that pays out one lump sum of money based on a specific qualified critical illness. Although more people were surviving critical illnesses, financial concerns impacted their health. In turn, recovery was delayed as a result from stress and other factors. Critical Illness Insurance started out in South Africa, where Dr. Barnard was from, and has grown drastically since then in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and the United States. Every country it has penetrated has become a huge success. Most countries Critical Illness Insurance outsell their Mortgage Protection Insurance.

Even if we look closer at the statistics:

1) Forty-eight percent of all mortgage foreclosures are due to some type of major illness, according to HUD.

2) Fifty percent of personal bankruptcy is due to some type of major illness, a Harvard University study revealed.

3) Only three percent of illnesses result in death of a major illness, according to HUD.

Even the statistics show that having mortgage protection would only help three percent of the people. Seventy-five percent of these people had health insurance, according to the Harvard University study. They either lost their benefits because they were too sick to go back to work or they couldn’t pay their premiums anymore. You can have the greatest health insurance policy and still get wiped out because health insurance is designed to cover medical expenses only. Health insurance will not pay for your living expenses such as your mortgage or rent payment, college tuition, car payments, utility bills or food for the family.

What Dr. Marius Barnard realized was despite the fact disability income protection plans were widely available, it wasn’t enough. From his personal research he discovered two things:

1) The people that lived would have been dead without the procedure

2) They were dying financially. Above all, being financially stressed took a toll on their health.

Not only is it financially devastating to not have the ability to produce an income but what about the treatment that your health insurance won’t pay for? The average household has less than $10,000 in retirement. They have no money set aside to pay for any type of critical illness. What if you had to pay out of pocket for experimental treatment that your health insurance wouldn’t cover even if it was the best thing to do for your situation? Where would you get the money?

Critical Illness insurance is for everyone. The policy is not limited to home owners or employed individuals. If your spouse becomes sick and you have to take time away from work, critical illness coverage would eliminate the added burden of not making the required income for your family to pay their bills.

In conclusion: Most of us are just one paycheck away from going bankrupt. In a moments notice we can lose everything we have worked hard for all of our lives. With the ability to choose the amount you need based on what you can afford not tied to how much your income is, your mind can be put at ease. The benefit will pay one lump sum, in most cases, for a qualified event. Some of the programs send the check within two weeks of diagnosis. There are things outside of our control that health insurance isn’t going to pay for alone. Such as experimental treatment, internal limitations or caps on your health insurance policies. Let’s not forget your mortgage, food and living expense or your child’s college education. How much would you need?

Butch Zemar
Elite Benefits of America
www.EliteBenefits.net

Posted in 1 Tagged: critical illness insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance