(Newswire.net — December 28, 2014) — He was only 45 years old when he was told that he had stage 3 colon cancer. Imagine his surprise and devastation upon hearing those words, it was soul crushing. How does that happen to such a young person? Since then ,he has found out that more and more young people are being diagnosed with all sorts of cancers and illnesses, and that he was not alone.
The statistics are staggering, some say that 2 out of 3 men and 1 out of every 3 women will be diagnosed with a cancer in their lifetime.
Luckily, there are many treatment programs available today, that are designed to save and improve patients quality of life, and many people survive the illnesses, but what about their finances? That is an entirely different story.
When Nenad was diagnosed at age 45, his whole life stopped for the next 12 months. Nothing stayed the same, and he had to take off about 6 months from work, to go through the radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Being self employed, he did not have any reimbursement for loss of wages, sick leave etc.
One thing he did have was a Critical illness policy from Foresters life insurance. He only bought that policy 2 years prior to being diagnosed, and boy was he glad he did buy it. The $100k that it paid him helped him and his family survive the next 12 months, so he could concentrate on getting well. Without it, says Christine, Nenad’s wife, she might have been forced to leave the young children and sick husband at home, and go to work herself, just to make ends meet.
You can read more about Nenad’s story, and more about critical illness insurance at this website www.criticalcover.ca
Critical insurance was invented almost 30 years ago by the renowned heart surgeon Marius Barnard, who worked on the first human heart transplant with his brother, Christiaan. He became so frustrated watching patients’ financial struggles as he treated them that he convinced insurance companies in his native South Africa to create a product.
In the early 1990s, he brought the concept to Canada. “He had such passion for the product that it just hit home,” says John McLaren, president of Future Benefits Management Inc., in Toronto and one of the insurance advisers who listened to Dr. Barnard’s pitch.
Since then, many Canadian Insurance companies have implemented CI insurance as part of their insurance portfolio, but still, most Canadians don’t know about it, and that has to change. It should be an important part of every Canadian’s insurance portfolio, since there is more and more of a chance that people will be diagnosed and survive an illness.
Some of the illnesses covered under a policy are heart attack, stroke, cancer and many others, and the payout is due 30 days after diagnosis, as long as the patient is still alive. If the patient dies within those 30 days, no benefit is payable, but all premiums would be refunded in most cases.
If you ask anyone that has benefited from a CI policy, their only regret usually is that they didn’t buy more of it. It truly is one of the best insurance policies one can buy, just ask someone that has been diagnosed, whether they wish they had an extra 1, 2 or 300 thousand dollars tax free to use for whatever they want or need.