This type of voluntary benefits is among a growing number of gap coverage being purchased by Americans.
Employers and individuals, alike, are starting to look into a type of coverage product known as volunteer benefits – such as cancer insurance – which can help to fill the gaps present in some of the most popular health plans.
These are rising in popularity as people start to see that a number of critical illnesses can still run up huge expenses.
While cancer insurance is far from the only product in the volunteer benefits category, it is among the top gap coverage products being purchased. The reason is that nearly everyone knows someone who has had some form of this disease and the costs of treating it can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars – which is above and beyond the fact that the individual receiving the treatments typically isn’t able to keep working for a full income during that time.
Cancer insurance and critical illness insurance policies are being purchased to protect against financial devastation.
Some other forms of volunteer benefits that are being purchased more often include those to protect against sports accidents and identity theft. While these products represent only a small fraction of the insurance industry as a whole, they are growing in size as people become more familiar with their own coverage and want to protect themselves against added risks.
For instance, with the health care reform, Americans have had to shop for their medical benefits and are paying closer attention to the amount that their policies require them to pay in terms of deductibles and copayments. Some of these factors can mean that despite the fact that a person has a health plan, there are still notable expenses that are faced when health care services are needed. The additional gap insurance can help to make up for those expenses.
These types of benefits are highly attractive to employees, which has encouraged employers to start to add them to their own offerings so that they will be more appealing to their workers. It can help to make the company more attractive to the best talent and can also make it appealing for those workers to stay with the business over time.
Cancer insurance and other gap policies have, therefore, become quite appealing to insurers, as well, as only 36 percent were offering products such as accident insurance back in 2004, but that figure has more than doubled to 67 percent this year.