Despite all the emphasis recently on major-medical health coverage, let’s not forget three other types of insurance policies that can provide valuable protection for you, your employees and respective families in the event of injury or illness.
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1. Disability Insurance
Only 31 percent of Americans are protected by disability insurance and half of those believe they need more coverage, a 2012 LIMRA and LIFE Foundation Insurance Barometer Study found. Disability insurance helps protect employees’ most valuable asset: their income and ability to earn a living.
Without steady paychecks, many would find it difficult — or even impossible — to pay the monthly mortgage or rent, car and credit card payments, utility and food bills, education costs, etc. In fact, half of all U.S. households examined would struggle to come up with $2,000 within a month, a study 2013 from the National Bureau of Economic Research determined (PDF).
Disability insurance could help alleviate some of the financial stress when disabling accidents lead to tightened purse strings.
2. Cancer or Specified Disease Insurance
An estimated 1.6 million Americans were expected to be diagnosed with cancer by the end of 2013. Cancer or specified-disease insurance can go a long way toward helping families focus on recovery, rather than on financial concerns.
A supplemental policy can help protect a patient’s savings from expenses that aren’t covered by major medical insurance. These include deductibles, out-of-network specialists, experimental cancer treatment, travel and lodging when treatment is far from home, child care and household help, and normal living expenses.
3. Life Insurance
Finally, life insurance isn’t fun to think about, but is crucial to a family’s well being should a household suddenly lose an income to death. Without it, a family’s entire standard of living could change drastically.
Life insurance policies that pay cash benefits can be used to pay remaining medical costs, cover funeral expenses, or pay monthly household bills. They can even be used to ensure a child can do something as simple as continue dance lessons or as momentous as attend college.
Women, Too, Need to Pay Attention
When providing benefit plans and making benefit choices, it should be self-evident that female employees and female business owners today have concerns just as do males when it comes to continuing the family lifestyle or caring for dependent children in the case of an emergency.
Consider these points when it comes to women business owners and women employees:
- The number of women ages 25 to 64 currently in the labor force with a college degree roughly tripled from 1970 to 2011, according (PDF) to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- The earnings of these women have also increased in proportion to men’s over the years, the Pew Research Center finds, and
- Mothers are the sole or primary providers for children in four out of 10 homes, the U.S. Department of Labor has determined.
So don’t forget to assess the needs of the female segment of the workforce.
Insurance policies photo via Shutterstock
[“source-ndtv”]
