Raising awareness of how different conditions are covered by critical illness policies – 4 things you should read
Throughout the year at Protection Guru, we aim to mark the numerous health awareness and medical condition campaigns with dedicated content to help inform advisers and educate on what the conditions are, the incidence rates and treatment options from a medical perspective. We also examine in detail how different conditions or health issues are covered by protection policies, commonly critical illness and income protection.
To do this, we turn to the expertise of a panel of doctors and medical professionals, who we have worked with for a number of years and who support us in the benchmarking of critical illness policies. The content we work with them on is intended to improve adviser understanding, but also to drive up the overall quality of cover provided, particularly in relation to critical illness insurance.
In today’s round-up, we bring you 4 insights marking various health awareness campaigns from the last 2 months, examining how each condition is covered on critical illness policies.
Bowel cancer
It is estimated that someone in the UK is diagnosed with bowel cancer every 15 minutes. Bowel Cancer UK dedicated the month of April to bowel cancer awareness, with the aim of improving knowledge of symptoms and reduce the number of people dying each year from this cancer. In support of this cause, we asked our panel of medical experts to explain the condition in more detail for advisers and how critical illness policies cover bowel cancer.
Parkinson’s disease
The 11th April marked World Parkinson’s Disease Day, an annual global awareness campaign intended to shine a light on the condition and work towards a finding a cure. All critical illness plans cover the condition, but as our expert medical panel explained, there are some key differences in the cover provided and definition wordings used.
Multiple Sclerosis
For the week commencing 25th April, the MS Society ran Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week. MS is often quoted as one of the top 4 or 5 conditions claimed for on critical illness policies and around 1 in 500 people are diagnosed with the condition during their lifetime. Once again, it’s a condition where there can be significant variations in insurer definition wordings, that will have an impact on the likelihood of a successful claim, as our medical experts explained.
Stroke
The month of May is Stroke Awareness Month, organised by The Stroke Association. This year’s campaign is focused on the importance of funding more and better research, with stroke still one of the most underfunded areas of health research. Stroke is a key critical illness condition and one that usually attracts the most claims behind cancer and heart attack, so it’s important for advisers to understand some of the nuances in coverage provided and how insurers compare.
