Working with a Fortune 500 Software company through an up-market broker client, we found a common gap in their coverage. When an employee experiences a major illness like, cancer, heart attack, or stroke the average out-of-pocket costs rise to almost $30k. Most employees are ill-equipped to deal with this cost. Especially, when loss of the employee’s income is factored in and typically a dual loss of income from the spouse who has to take care of the sick employee.
This is especially problematic since less than two-thirds of Americans have more than $1K in the bank that’s not marked for rent, bills etc. In fact, because of this, Harvard conducted a study and found that 66% of bankruptcies in the U.S. were caused by medical bills and 77% of those had major medical insurance.
This Fortune 500 company realized they didn’t want to have an employee in the fight of their life with a critical illness and at the same time have a financial situation. We brought in a voluntary catastrophic plan, critical illness, and accident without increasing cost to the employer. This added benefit was also used to strengthen their benefit package to help attract and retain talent.