Critical Illness Insurance Sales Rise: LIMRA

Many workers use critical illness insurance as a supplement to major medical insurance.

Some people who cannot afford major medical illness insurance try to use products such as critical illness insurance, hospital indemnity insurance and accident insurance to compensate for lack of major medical coverage.

When Affordable Care Act major medical benefits requirements and underwriting rules took effect, in January 2014, the rules expanded many people's access to major medical coverage, but the rules also led to an increase in deductibles, co-payments and coinsurance amounts for many insured people.

Some speculated that the big increase in out-of-pocket costs would boost demand for gap-filler products.

The new LIMRA figures suggest that workers have been using critical illness insurance to fill in only a small portion of their coverage gaps.

About 78% of full-time workers participating in LIMRA surveys have said that they at least occasionally live paycheck to paycheck,  but only 38% of the workers offered critical illness insurance take up the product, according to LIMRA analysts.

A full copy of the LIMRA critical illness insurance update is available here.

— Read Why the Time Is Right for Critical Illness Insurance, on ThinkAdvisor.

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