Is Critical Illness Insurance Worth It?

When deciding if you should get critical illness insurance or not, it can be helpful to visualize a scenario.

Let’s say you experience a situation where you may benefit from having critical illness insurance coverage, like a heart attack. The hospital bills, immediate procedures and ongoing medications can quickly add up to thousands of dollars. Having an affordable critical illness insurance policy before an event like this happens can help bring the cost down.

This scenario can apply to a wide variety of critical illnesses. Strokes are a common condition that may fall into the critical illness category. ¹ When life throws you a curveball, Aflac’s critical illness can help you and your family financially navigate the newfound care needed.

What is Critical Illness Insurance?

Critical illness insurance is a type of policy that provides additional coverage in emergencies and certain life-changing events. With critical illness insurance, a lump-sum payment is provided when a policyholder experiences a covered illness.

These plans can be particularly helpful when your primary health insurance coverage leaves you with gaps in coverage. Luckily, critical illness insurance usually comes at an affordable rate, allowing the benefits to outweigh the costs.²

Benefits of Critical Illness Insurance

There are a few unique characteristics that make it worth it to buy critical illness insurance:

• Flexibility: Usually, critical illness insurance plans pay a lump sum that can be used for a variety of needs, as long as the illness is covered. This means you can use the lump sum for medical bills, mortgage payments and everyday expenses.³
• Affordability: Critical illness insurance plans are typically less expensive than other kinds of supplemental insurance policies.⁴

Critical Illness Insurance Coverage

The benefits of each critical illness insurance policy vary from company to company. At Aflac, critical illness insurance is offered through employee payroll and classified as a group insurance plan.

If the illness experienced is covered in an Aflac critical illness plan, we pay out a lump-sum payment to be used as needed. This means you can use the lump sum for medical bills or everyday expenses, like groceries and electricity bills. This functionality makes what critical illness insurance covers worth it—even if your primary health plan already offers solid medical coverage.

Aflac’s critical illness insurance may also help cover dependent children under the age of 26 and spouses, if applicable. Depending on the plan you choose, you may be able to receive coverage for first-time events and second-time occurrences of the same critical illness.

Hospital stays, ongoing care and intensive treatments may also be covered depending on your location and plan type. We recommend chatting with an agent to review your insurance options.