Reduce your medical costs with this affordable coverage

Critical Illness insurance, also known as heart attack insurance, cancer insurance, specified disease insurance or dread disease insurance, is a product designed to help lessen the financial impact of a serious disease. A South African surgeon invented it when he saw his patients struggling with their finances after they recovered from major illnesses, making it the only insurance product that wasn’t created by an insurance company.

Although not every disease is covered, a critical illness insurance policy will cover many of the most common and financially disruptive conditions. It helps protect you from the financial burden of a serious illness by giving you money to use for anything – making up for lost wages, funding extra time off work, covering medical payments and even traveling for treatment. That way, you can focus on getting well.

Critical illness policies work by paying a lump-sum benefit amount following the diagnosis of a covered condition. After diagnosis, the covered individual (you or a loved one) submits a claim for benefits which are then paid directly to them.

You can use the benefit from a critical illness insurance policy to cover medical expenses, your mortgage, utility payments, or even grocery bills. If experimental treatment is available, a critical illness insurance policy can help give you the means to pursue it. If you need to travel for procedures or physician visits, a critical illness insurance policy can help pay for your transportation and lodging. When facing a life-threatening illness or condition, critical illness insurance helps give you the freedom to focus on your recovery.

With a benefit amount of $30,000 on a critical illness insurance policy, you can help eliminate a significant portion, if not all of your medical expenses – and then use your remaining amount to make yourself comfortable during treatment. A policy like that could cost less than a dollar a day. Higher benefit amounts can further reduce the financial burden posed by a critical illness. This small payment can go further than even large monthly contributions to a Health Savings Account (HSA).

Critical illness insurance can cover a variety of the most common serious illnesses or conditions. Making a claim for symptoms like chest pains or a stomachache won’t trigger payment, but a diagnosis of covered condition like a heart attack or cancer could.

Many critical illness insurance policies also include a selection of riders to complement or bolster existing coverage. If you’re unfamiliar, a rider is an optional add-on you may select to enhance your policy. By adding a rider, you can extend coverage to your spouse or children, or expand it to include additional critical illnesses. You can attach a Return of Premium rider to your policy to have a portion of your premiums repaid to your loved ones if you die from something other than a covered critical illness.

If you’re worried about more diseases or conditions than those listed above, some policies allow you to purchase coverage for additional critical illnesses to create the best protection possible.

Assurity has simplified its Critical Illness Insurance offered directly to consumers. In order to increase access and keep costs low, it covers only these four major illnesses:

• Cancer (invasive or non-invasive)*
• Heart attack**
• Stroke
• Advanced Alzheimer’s disease

You can learn more about Assurity’s Critical Illness Insurance here, including how to get an online quote in minutes.

To determine if critical illness insurance is worth it for you, it’s important to know the risks of receiving a critical illness diagnosis in your lifetime, as well as the medical cost of critical illness.

The risk of diagnosis

In 2020, an estimated 1.8 million Americans² received a cancer diagnosis — but only a third of that number died from the disease. Heart attacks are also common, with 805,000 occurring annually² in the United States, and there are almost as many strokes suffered each year — a leading cause of adult disability.

The odds of survival

Nobody wants to imagine him or herself in a situation where they’re facing a deadly disease. There is a silver lining, however — survival rates are increasing for most critical illnesses. For example, overall cancer rates declined 1.8% for men and 1.4% for women per year from 2001 to 2017². It’s more likely than ever that a cancer diagnosis isn’t a death sentence, but that doesn’t make such a diagnosis less of a financial burden.

The financial burden of critical illness

In fact, 32 percent of Americans had medical debt in 2020³ — many as a result of a critical illness. The current out-of-pocket maximum for a family is $14,100⁴, a fraction of the total cost for cancer treatment. You might incur this cost for multiple years while you or a loved one battles cancer, leaving you with little in the way of funding for everything else you need. On top of that, transportation to and from treatment, lost time at work, and various comforts to make the treatment more pleasant all add to the financial cost of a cancer diagnosis. It’s a similar story for other critical illnesses, and one with which too many Americans are familiar.

If you think a critical illness policy might be right for you, it’s time to go about finding the best possible coverage. Unlike many other types of insurance, there’s no easy formula to find out how much you need — each diagnosis will come with its own challenges and costs, and no two circumstances are alike.

What you should consider are the “knowns” — for instance, how much money do you have in your savings? How much is the deductible on your medical insurance? At the very least, you should have enough critical illness insurance to cover your out-of-pocket exposure – that is, your deductible and coinsurance up to your plan’s maximum. A larger policy might cover several years of out-of-pocket costs.

Since you can use the benefit from a critical illness insurance policy to pay for whatever you want, you might want to factor in the costs of transportation or experimental treatments into your coverage. The first step to finding the best critical illness insurance policy is to figure out what you’ll need the money for so you can determine how much coverage you’ll need. For reference, typical coverage amounts can range from $10,000 to $50,000. Also, depending on your age, some critical illness insurance policy premiums go up after age 65, unlike Assurity’s that does not rise when you need it most.

Once you’ve figured out how much coverage you need, you’ll need to find out how much critical illness insurance might cost — perhaps less than you’d think! You can get a critical illness insurance quote from Assurity as a baseline for how much your insurance may cost.

With all this knowledge in hand, it’s time for the final step — getting a critical illness insurance policy. Check out Assurity’s Critical Illness Insurance for more information or to get your price in minutes.

¹Chicago Tribune, Medical GoFundMe campaigns are a symptom of a sick health insurance system, 2018

²National Cancer Institute, Cancer Statistics, 2020

³Kaiser Family Foundation, 2014

⁴Healthcare.gov, 2022

Additional disclosure information

LIMITATIONS AND EXCLUSIONS (may vary by state)

Pre-existing Condition. Pre-existing condition means a sickness or physical condition for which, during the 12 months before the issue date or last reinstatement date, the insured person received medical consultation, diagnosis, advice or treatment from a physician or had taken prescribed medication. No benefits will be paid for a critical illness that is caused by a pre-existing condition unless the date of diagnosis is after the policy has been in force for 12 months from the issue date or last reinstatement date.

Waiting Period. Waiting period means the 30 days following the issue date or ten days following the last policy reinstatement date. The date of diagnosis of a covered critical illness must be made while the coverage is in force and after any waiting period. No benefits will be paid if a diagnosis or a medical consultation that leads to diagnosis of invasive cancer or non-invasive cancer occurs during the waiting period. If cancer is diagnosed during the waiting period, benefits will be paid for a subsequent diagnosis of cancer if the insured person is symptom- and treatment-free for at least 12 consecutive months and in complete remission prior to subsequent diagnosis.

Misstatement of Age and/or Gender. If the insured person’s age and/or gender has been misstated, an adjustment in premiums, coverage or both will be made based on the correct age and/or gender. If, according to the correct age, the coverage provided by the policy would not have become effective or would have ceased, Assurity’s only liability during the period in which the insured person was not eligible for coverage shall be limited to a refund of premiums.

Misstatement of Tobacco Use. If, during the first two years of the policy, the tobacco status of the insured person has been misstated, Assurity will revise the policy’s benefit amount to the amount the premium paid would have purchased using the correct tobacco status on the issue date.

The policy will not pay benefits for losses that are caused by or are the result of an insured person:

• being exposed to war or any act of war, declared or undeclared;
• actively serving in any of the armed forces or units auxiliary thereto, including the National Guard or Army Reserve, except during active duty training of less than 60 days;
• engaging in hang-gliding, hot air ballooning, bungee jumping, parachuting, scuba diving, sail gliding, motor vehicle racing, parasailing, parakiting, mountain or rock climbing, B.A.S.E. jumping, sky diving or cave diving;
• being addicted to drugs or suffering from alcoholism;
• being intoxicated (as determined by the laws governing the operation of motor vehicles in the jurisdiction where loss occurs) or under the influence of an illegal substance or a narcotic (except for narcotics used as prescribed to the insured person by a physician);
• committing or attempting to commit a felony;
• being incarcerated in a penal institution or government detention facility;
• engaging in an illegal occupation;
• intentionally self-inflicting an injury; or
• committing or attempting to commit suicide, while sane or insane.

Policy Form No. I H1820 underwritten by Assurity Life Insurance Company, Lincoln, NE.

Policy Form No. I H1820 DTC (NY) (Specified Disease) underwritten by Assurity Life Insurance Company of New York, Albany, NY.

IMPORTANT NOTICE— CRITICAL ILLNESS INSURANCE PROVIDES LIMITED BENEFIT COVERAGE. It is not a comprehensive major medical plan or Medicare supplement policy and does not satisfy the requirement for minimum essential coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is not a substitute for major medical insurance and may not be appropriate for Medicaid recipients. 

This policy may contain reductions of benefits, limitations and exclusions. Click here for standard Limitations and Exclusions. Product availability, features, rates, limitations and exclusions may vary by state. The state specific policy form is the ultimate authority for any questions about this product.

*In some states, diagnosis of cancer during the first 30 days following the policy’s issue date results in a significant benefit reduction or policy cancellation. The percentage benefit amount payable for invasive and non-invasive cancer combined cannot exceed 100%.

**Heart attack does not include established (old) myocardial infarction occurring prior to the issue date, sudden cardiac arrest, cardiac arrest or cardiopulmonary arrest. 

Assurity reserves the right to order, at the company’s expense, evidence of insurability which the company feels is necessary for the prudent evaluation of the risk.

Assurity is a marketing name for the mutual holding company Assurity Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries. Those subsidiaries include but are not limited to: Assurity Life Insurance Company and Assurity Life Insurance Company of New York. Insurance products and services are offered by Assurity Life Insurance Company in all states except New York. In New York, insurance products and services are offered by Assurity Life Insurance Company of New York, Albany, NY. Product availability, features and rates may vary by state.