How Aflac is expanding coronavirus benefits for your clients

You don’t need a medical degree to identify the most talked-about health condition right now: Covid-19. But as a benefits broker, you do want to have a clear picture of how the insurance carriers you work with are addressing it.

Starting in the first quarter of 2021, the Aflac+ Rider, which can be added to select individual accident, hospital and short-term disability insurance policies at an additional cost, will expand to incorporate benefits related to a number of new covered conditions, including Covid-19. Get more information on the Aflac+ Rider. Existing Aflac+ Rider policyholders will gain access to these new benefits at no additional cost.

How has the Aflac+ Rider changed to address Covid-19?

We’ve added a tier of benefits to address hospitalizations resulting from a diagnosis of some human coronaviruses, including Covid-19, along with other infectious illnesses such as influenza and pneumonia. Before Covid-19, the Aflac+ Rider already covered other kinds of conditions, such as heart attack, stroke, type 1 diabetes, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis.

It’s simple: When the Aflac+ Rider is added to an eligible policy, it ensures that people who have a health event covered by the rider receive benefits to use in whatever way they see fit, unless the benefits are otherwise assigned. We added human coronavirus to the list of Aflac+ Rider covered conditions to further strengthen this rider’s valuable benefits.

For Covid-19, if policyholders are hospitalized for as little as four days, they are eligible to receive a benefit payment subject to the terms and conditions outlined in the policy. They can use it to help cover daily living expenses while they recover, to help pay for deliveries they need while they continue quarantining at home after being released from the hospital, to help cover other medical or non-medical out-of-pocket costs—whatever they need.

Are there other ways Aflac supports people in the age of Covid-19?

In addition to the benefit payments that the Aflac+ Rider provides related to the human coronavirus:

• Our hospital indemnity, hospital intensive care and short-term disability plans pay benefits that may result from a Covid-19 diagnosis subject to the terms and conditions outlined in the policies.
• Select Aflac policies include wellness and/or health screening benefits that may be used for Covid-19 testing, antibody testing and vaccinations.
• Our Aflac Sickness Rider covers hospital admission and confinement for any illness (not just Covid-19).

How are the Aflac+ Rider’s Covid-19 benefits different from other carriers’ benefits?

Many other carriers have a higher threshold of care before people can receive benefits. For example, one major supplemental carrier covers Covid-19, but only when a patient is confined to the hospital for 14 days or longer. Another requires that a patient be put on a ventilator and stay in the intensive care unit for five or more days before they are eligible for benefits.

Those benefits won’t actually help all Covid-19 patients. Not all people who require hospitalization for Covid-19 need to stay in the hospital for that long or need ICU care.

Knowing these facts, we designed our coronavirus benefits to help the greatest number of people. Unlike some other carriers who only cover Covid-19, Aflac covers other human coronaviruses, as well. The Aflac+ Rider pays hospitalization benefits resulting from diagnosis of a covered condition after just four days, not 14. Here’s how it breaks down:

• Hospital confinement between four and nine days: $1,250 lump sum payment
• Hospital confinement of 10 or more days: $3,125 lump sum payment
• ICU confinement day one: $5,000 lump sum payment

Is Covid-19 the only condition covered under this expansion of the Aflac+ Rider?

We’ve also added coverage for influenza, bird flu/H5N1, pneumonia and Ebola. All of these conditions are in the same coverage tier as Covid-19, so they have the same benefits: $5,000 for ICU confinement; $3,125 for hospital confinement of 10 days or more; and $1,250 for a hospital confinement between four and nine days.