Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company's newest cancer insurance plan pays initial diagnosis benefits and addresses many advances in treatment and prevention, the company has announced.
Colonial's new voluntary, individual, indemnity-based insurance plan supplements major medical coverage by helping pay the direct and indirect costs associated with cancer. The plan offers four different levels of coverage with premiums and benefit amounts designed to meet a variety of budgets and coverage needs.
“The American Cancer Society says cancer diagnoses are expected to reach 1.7 million this year,” said Randy Finn, the assistant vice president of product development at Colonial Life. “Most of America's workers are not prepared for the high cost of a cancer diagnosis. Cancer insurance helps employees pay for the expenses their medical insurance does not cover such as loss of income, deductibles and co-pays, child care, and out-of-network treatment.”
Colonial Life's cancer insurance plan helps provide financial protection from the costs associated with cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. The coverage includes more than 30 benefits, such as:
- Family care benefit. Pays a daily amount when a covered dependent child receives inpatient or outpatient cancer treatment. Plans cover individuals, spouses, one-parent, and two-parent families.
- Wellness/health screenings. Employers have the option to choose between two benefits that pay for tests and screenings that encourage early detection of cancer.
- Hospital confinement. Individuals can choose different levels of coverage that pay a benefit for hospital stays of various durations.
- Cancer treatment. The plan pays benefits for surgery, anesthesia, radiation, chemotherapy, anti-nausea medication, surgical procedures, private full-time nursing services, experimental treatments, reconstructive surgery, prostheses, bone marrow donor screening, and other treatments for cancer.
- Transportation and lodging benefits. The plan pays a benefit for transportation to treatment and lodging for the covered individual and a companion.
- Home health care services and hospice care. The plan pays a benefit for physical therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy, as well as appliances and durable medical equipment. In addition, it pays a $15,000 maximum lifetime benefit for hospice care.
- Cancer vaccine. The plan pays a benefit for a vaccine for cancer prevention.
- Fertility services. The plan pays for egg extraction or harvesting and sperm collection and storage for covered policyholders diagnosed with cancer.
Employees can choose to enhance their coverage with three optional riders:
- Initial Diagnosis of Cancer Rider. This rider pays a one-time benefit in $1,000 increments from $1,000 and $10,000 when a covered person is first diagnosed with cancer. If employees purchase this coverage for their dependent children, they receive two and a half times the chosen benefit amount ($2,500 to $25,000) if their covered child is diagnosed with cancer.
- Initial Diagnosis of Cancer Progressive Payment Rider. This rider pays a $50 lump sum payment to the policyholder for each month the rider has been in force, after the waiting period, once cancer is first diagnosed.
- Specified Disease Hospital Confinement Rider. This rider pays $300 a day if a policyholder is confined to a hospital for treatment of one of 34 specified diseases covered such as muscular dystrophy, Lyme disease, and sickle cell anemia.
Learn more: www.coloniallife.com.
Victoria Spears
Victoria Prussen Spears is senior vice president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Brooklyn Law School, Ms. Spears was an attorney at a leading New York City law firm before joining Meyerowitz Communications. She may be contacted at [email protected].