Living Benefits Life Insurance?
For those of you that have been to one of my workshops, maybe have heard my true life story of "what I learned about finances from almost dying," or visited livingbenefitsforlife.com, I'm left asking that question.
I just read a recent Kaiser report about a 44-year old teacher that suffered an emergency heart attack and surgery requiring 4 stents. Ironically, he was insured but given the timing of everything had to be rushed to the closest hospital. Unfortunately, like most employees, he was thankful that he had health insurance, but it's what he didn't know that really caused him problems. After his emergency room visit, procedure, subsequent follow-up care and a short stay in the hospital, he received an additional bill for almost $109,000! Why, when he had insurance?
Well, about 60% of employees are covered by self-insured health plans where there are different guidelines and rules to follow, such as in-network and out-of-network or deductible requirements. Unfortunately, he was taken to a hospital that wasn't a preferred network provider, meaning that almost $109,000 of expenses were considered out-of-network and his responsibility. Most people feel that if they have insurance, things are covered but there are just too many stories where that simply isn't the case. You probably didn't know that unplanned medical bills are one of the biggest reasons for bankruptcy and most of those people had health insurance!
Kiplinger's September issue highlighted a 55-year old woman that incurred almost $50,000 of additional expenses tackling Lyme disease, even though she had health insurance. Her savior was a "living benefits" rider with her term (that's right TERM) life insurance that allowed her to access her death benefit to pay those expenses. As she said,"what a blessing this was for us!"
And then there was me at age 24, suffering a ruptured intestine riddled with sepsis that lingered for 4 days before the pain finally caused me to literally pass-out, being rushed to the hospital. When I was presented a hospital bill for over $360,000 because my health insurance hadn't met the new employee 90-day exception rules, I think I did pass-out! Well, 7 years later, I finally paid that off!
Please do yourself a major favor, "Don't take things for granted!" Better yet, would you rather have your story be the one that was highlighted with Kaiser, Kiplinger's, or personal experience? I strongly encourage that people look into what the 55-year old woman did with a living benefits life insurance policy at livingbenefitsforlife.com My answer to Living Benefits Life Insurance? YES!