Neglecting Critical Illness Insurance is Risky Business.

Part of our continuing blog series entitled:

Insurance Mistakes Canadians Continue To Make.

What are our insurance risks? Are we as Canadians dying early? No. We are becoming ill. There’s no doubt that life insurance has a crucial role in our lives, but there is a new era of Critical Illness Insurance gaining ground and for good reason. We live in a society of illness.  40% of women and 45% of men in Canada will get cancer and over 3,300 get diagnosed with cancer every week, says the Canadian Cancer Society.  Denial or avoidance is irresponsible when you consider these statistics. We need to face this risk of a critical illness  instead of pretending it isn’t going to happen.

I know most of us think we’re healthy and we’re not worrying at the moment but how many people do we know who are survivors of cancer, heart attack or stroke? I’m sure we could name many. I can count at least 6 relatives of mine. Never mind friends, colleagues and neighbours. Those relatives of mine who have had cancer were all under the age of 45.

Survivors of cancer, heart attack, and stroke (just to name a few of the more known illnesses) are burdened with an array of costs. From recovery to treatments to non-covered drugs to time off work, their hard earned income, savings, and retirement money becomes depleted and forces them back to work when they should be recovering. Critical illness insurance, which pays a lump sum cash benefit, can really help to relieve the costs and stress associated with a recovery.

Canadian health care may not cover the latest treatments in cancer cases and the Canadian Cancer Society says the average cost for cancer drugs is $20,000 a year.  See our page, Critical Illness Insurance and Cancer in Canada for more on this. It’s common for people to have their savings and retirement damaged by the cost of illness and recovery.

We are fortunate to have wonderful advances in medical technologies and we are living longer than ever, even after an illness. The problem for many is that it costs money to recover and maintain a lifestyle. If we think our health care system is going to take care of us in the future, think again.  We need to take care of ourselves rather than totally relying on the government. One smart step would be to set up proper insurance coverage. $50,000, $100,000 or $500,000 dollars of coverage  can do wonders for surviving a critical illness. A cancer survivor I recently met said she is still so angry at herself for passing up the Critical Illness insurance that was suggested to her almost two years ago.

There are a few reasons why many Canadians don’t even know about or understand how Critical Illness insurance can help them. One reason is that insurance advisors and agents are not even mentioning the product to their clients. This is because many advisors are not properly educated, trained or up to date on the details of Critical Illness Insurance and are not confident to speak about it. Another reason is that many advisors don’t even own Critical Illness insurance and are never going to be able to best convey the benefits of a product they don’t own themselves. Also, Critical Illness insurance has a more stringent qualification process than life insurance. Eligibility has a lot to do with the health history of your immediate family, not just your own, so some insurance advisors just don’t want to deal with a product that’s harder to place for a client.

Looking back now, do you remember your insurance advisor or agent ever mentioning anything about Critical Illness insurance to you? Do you feel this is risk worth protecting?