While we all know we are going to shuffle off this mortal coil at some point when we pop our clogs, falling ill is also right up there in terms of being a very highly likely event that we are going to have to deal with at some point in our lives. The financial effect illness can wreak on our lives is huge and many years of hard work and frugal saving can be lost very quickly.

Carrying medical insurance, whether it be for long or short term care is going to pay dividends to the policy holder at some point. The cost of illness is severe not only in terms of a reduced earning capacity and a financial perspective, but also from the emotional and personal security points of view. The ability to pay for treatment when you need it is a great benefit to anyone in need of medical care.

Long term care costs that may not be of a medical nature, but are nonetheless required to allow for day-to-day living with a degree of comfort and dignity are all to often ignore when assessing the need for cover. With todays postcode lottery for receiving prescriptions for certain classes of drugs and procedures under the NHS, the ability to pay for your treatment will help you ensure you get the very best care for you family and yourself.

Carrying medical insurance also allows you to avoid the interminably long waiting times that come with many procedures that while being straight forward are very commonly required. Hip and knee replacements are life changing procedures that provide very high levels of improvement in patients ability to enjoy life. Unfortunately they are also in great demand and given the constrained hospital availability, the waiting times can run into years. Medical insurance will cut that down to a few weeks at most.

Medical insurance coverage, just like many other forms of personal insurance protection, can be tailored to suit your individual circumstances very closely. Your first step in assessing what type of policy is suitable and appropriate for your family and youself, is to define what you actually need to be covered for. Paying attention to your own family medical history will help you identify what risk areas affect your family and are therefore likely to appear in your own health at some point.

Many medical insurance policies will help with prevention of illnesses and management of existing conditions. This is a win-win situation for both the insurance provider and you as the policy holder, you get the benefit of better medical check-ups that may lead to a healthier and illness free life while the insurance company saves money by not having to pay claims given it has a healthier policy holder!

Choosing medical insurance to form part of your familys protection and financial portfolio makes very good sense. It is a policy that you are likely to claim on in the future and will come to rely upon on when making sure that illness does not spread to your financial health and future. After all, there can be no price attached to achieving peace of mind for you and your family.

Life insurance is taken out under the legal terminology ‘utmost good faith’. This is said to mean that the insurance company and the person taking out the policy are acting in good faith and that the policy delivers what is advertised without the potential policy holder having to read through the small print. Critics have suggested that by refusing to pay out in these cases of cancer insurers are contravening this mandate. They have been particularly critical of sales men and women that fail to point out the pitfalls of the policies they sell.

Insurance companies have claimed that ‘ductal carcinoma in situ’ which is diagnosed in over 3000 women every year is not technically a critical illness as the cells in the tissue outside the ducts have not yet shown signs of cancer. The condition is known as a pre-cancer which is why the term ‘in situ’ is used. However although the cancer is not fully developed people that suffer often have to go through major surgery to prevent the cancer progressing. Mastectomies are not uncommon with this diagnosis and groups are keen to lobby against the fact that insurance companies will not pay out.

In one case a woman had a 70,000 pound policy and was diagnosed with this pre-cancer. She was given a mastectomy and was forced out of work for over two years. He insurance company refused to pay out as the brochure that had given her when she signed up for the policy clearly stated that it would not be covered. The real difficulty arises because had she not had the preventative treatment the cancer would have developed fully and she would have become ill enough to receive the payout. Understandably she could not risk her life to wait for the payout and she opted to have the surgery as quickly as possible.

The main criticism is that if the illness is not considered critical then why do sufferers have to go through such radical and invasive treatments? Some companies do make a point of paying out in the event of this illness but it is important to all people that are looking for life insurance that you carefully scrutinise the policy you take out and be aware that ‘ductal carcinoma in situ’ may not be included in your critical illness cover.

Disability benefits will help you with your cost of living during the time that you are not well enough to return to work. They will usually not pay enough money to equal your working wages, but should be enough to pay your basic bills. Almost all disability insurance does not begin immediately, but requires a waiting period of two weeks to several months.

If you are expected to be unable to work at all for at least a year, you may be eligible to have Social Security pay you disability benefits. The amount you will receive will depend on your age and how much money you were making at your job.

There are also types of disability insurance that your employer may offer, where the premiums are taken out of your paycheck. Almost all employers are required by law to offer short-term disability insurance of some sort, like paid sick leave, although the amount of time available may vary from just a few days up to six months, or even two years.

You also may be eligible for your company’s long-term disability insurance plan, if they have one. This may cover you in a situation where an injury or illness prevents you from working for a very long time, or even for your lifetime. Check with your state laws to see what your employer is required to provide you with, and ask your benefits department to explain the plan in detail.

While you are investigating your insurance options, you may wonder what some of the terms used really mean, like ‘non-cancelable’ or ‘guaranteed renewable’. Non-cancelable means that your policy can never be changed or canceled, unless you don’t pay your premiums. This helps to make sure you aren’t discriminated against when you are not well enough to work. Guaranteed renewable means that the policy will be the same every year, and the premiums cannot be increased, which means that you don’t have to pay more after having a workplace accident, unlike a lot of auto insurance. If you don’t understand any other terms in your policy, be sure to ask your insurance administrator to explain them, or look them up yourself.

You may think that this sounds like a lot of work, but it’s really not too difficult. Understanding the principles of disability insurance will allow you to make the right choice of an insurance policy for your unique situation, and to be reassured that your family and your home will be protected in the event of sudden illness or an accident on the job.

The first distinction to make is between life insurance and life assurance. Although these terms are often used interchangeably there is a difference: Insurance generally refers to an event that might happen whereas assurance refers to something that will happen.

Using this definition life insurance would generally cover accidental death whereas life assurance would cover for when the policy holder dies at the end of their life. However, most companies do not make such an explicit distinction between the two. It is of course important that you make it clear what type of cover you are looking for.

Life Level Term

Life level term insurance provides the policy holder with a rate of cover that stays the same throughout the policy. The policy holder can decide on the number of years and the level of cover they require at the outset of the policy. The policy can be set up as a single life plan in which the sum of money that has been insured is paid out if the insured person dies before the end date of the policy.

Alternatively a joint life first death policy can be arranged. This is where two people are insured with the sum insured being paid out after the death of one of the insured.

People taking out this type of insurance can benefit from Critical Illness cover which means the sum insured is paid out upon the diagnosis of a critical illness. To include critical illness cover the policy holder will have to pay an additional premium. If the insured person survives the length of the policy then no money is paid out.

Mortgage Life Insurance

Mortgage life insurance is designed to cover the costs of a mortgage in the event of the death of a key breadwinner. It is a popular option for a family as it pays the outstanding balance of the mortgage in a lump sum if the insured dies before the end of the policy. As the insured is insuring to cover the cost of the mortgage the policy costs reduce over time as you repay more of your mortgage.

Mortgage life lnsurance can also be taken out in a single life plan or a joint life first death basis. In the latter the mortgage will be paid off in the event of one of the insured dying. This is where the policy finishes – nothing is paid out on the death of the second insured.

This also provides the option of taking out critical illness cover for the cost of an added premium. Critical illness cover will pay out if the insured is diagnosed with a critical illness. If the insured survives beyond the policy end date then nothing is paid out.

Critical Illness Insurance

CII pays out if the insures is diagnosed with a critical illness within the dates of the Insurance policy. The amount of money covered by the policy can be decided at the outset as can the duration of the policy. It is available as a single life basis or a joint life basis. The policy can stand alone but it is often added to a life level term Insurance policy or a mortgage life insurance policy for the cost of an added premium. If the insured survives the length of the policy then the sum insured is not paid out.

There are a number of companies that help you find the right policy for you by cross checking a number of different insurance companies for quotes.

Articles abound with stories of liposuction, boob jobs and stomach stapling. Celebrities are slated for still having a few extra pounds weeks after childbirth and unflattering comparison pictures are ruthlessly sought after to belittle the star.

Looking like a ‘real’ person, has been lost along the way. It is no longer acceptable to have curves unless they are surgically enhanced and pointing defying gravity. A multi million pound industry has been built up around ‘helping’ people to lose weight. Alongside this, the incidence of obesity has risen at an alarming rate. How do the two go together?

The Western world has become thoroughly obsessed with looking a certain way. Promoting the opinion that being over a certain size makes you less of a worthwhile person is a dangerous and untrue idea. The more people, and women in particular, are targeted with this idea the more obsessed we become with food.

This preoccupation with food has taken us away from the idea of food for fuel and it has made it the enemy to be resisted at all costs. For some, the more you try to resist something, especially something that your body can’t do without, the more you want it.

On top of this, particularly in the US, it has become a status issue to have the biggest, the best and the most. Greedy fast food chains are making portions ever huger. Therefore, people are being bombarded with images of how the media think we should look and then bombarded with ever bigger portions of food.

For many this is a losing battle. Continuous cycles of bingeing and dieting are playing havoc with people’s health with dangerous and costly results. Life insurance, if you can get it with an eating disorder of either obesity or anorexia, is not cheap.

For many young people with low self esteem, having the perceived slur on their character of carrying around ‘normal’ weight is unbearable. These are the ones prone to anorexia and it can be no coincidence that the majority of them are female.

Anorexia is a mental illness which includes self inflicted starvation, vomiting and excessive exercise to the point of exhaustion. Throughout the life of this illness, much physical damage is done. Brain, heart and kidney damage are just a few of the things that cannot be reversed even once the sufferer is eating normally again.

Depression is a major side effect of anorexia, although many report to having had emotional trauma or depression before the eating disorder began. The incidence of suicide linked to depressed anorexics is relatively small, 2 – 5%, but suicide attempts are much higher.

It is possible to recover from anorexia but it can have lasting effects. These will cause problems in the future for any life insurance that a former sufferer may wish to take out. Insurers like to back low risk clients and anorexics do not fall into that group.

They come with the added threat of future Osteoporosis as well as heart disease and any undisclosed anorexia, from however young an age, can cause a company not to pay out in the event of a long term illness or death from any other factor.

It also affects the family’s chances of reasonable insurance rates too. A female with a close relative who has ever suffered anorexia is 10 – 20 times more likely to become a sufferer herself. This is reflected in life insurance rates.

Insurance companies have their own guide to ideal weight ranges. Doctors claim these tables to be rather low and they do not really account for build. However, sticking to a reasonable diet and a sensible weight range can modify your life insurance premiums.

Understandably, winning the lottery is a much more pleasant prospect to consider and would, of course, fund a move to Scotland where there are an extra 19 life-prolonging drugs available on the NHS than in the UK. But for the majority of us, that is not a feasible option. A much more sensible choice would be life insurance, to include critical illness cover.

Is this really necessary, I hear you ask. Many people believe it is not an affordable option and they take their chances in the ‘it’ll never happen to me’ way of thinking. But consider the statistics. 620,000 people per year die in the UK. One in three men aged 30 will develop cancer, or suffer a stroke or heart disease before the age of 65 and over 11,000 women per year die of breast cancer.

That’s not only a lot of people suffering undue financial pressures on top of serious illness but a lot of families coping with the added burden of depleted finances on top of such loss. 40,000 homes are sold every year to finance long term care for people who believed it would never happen to them.

Experts forecast that cancer cases would rise by a third by 2010. Some life insurance companies are now offering cancer cover insurance by itself. Is this worth having?

Well yes, if you consider that among the life prolonging drugs available on the NHS, some of them can cost 10,000 pounds a month. Some hospitals will try to refuse treatment if a patient is mixing NHS and private care but this is an illegal practice so check out your rights and insist on the very best of NHS care that your tax money pays and, at the same time, benefit from your insurance by having access to the best drugs on the market.

Things to watch out for are that some insurers will not cover anyone with a close family member who has been diagnosed with cancer. With one in three people being diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, that’s a fair few people who could not access this cover so be sure to disclose all relevant information to the life insurance company before paying your premiums. With one in five claims being rejected because of undisclosed medical history this is not something to be overlooked.

However, on the plus side, premiums for cancer cover with life insurance are an average of 20 pounds – 25 pounds a month. Considering the odds, this is quite reasonable. The premiums can also be reduced if you commit to a healthy lifestyle.

So, by all means carry on with the lottery but not the lottery of life.

It is recommended that you actually look at your own medical records so that nothing slips by undisclosed. Sometimes, doctors will make notes on your file that even you are not aware of. Some life insurance companies can use these undisclosed events as a way of refusing to pay out in the event of a claim.

This can happen even if the undisclosed illness has no bearing on the illness or death of the claimant. They will see it as an act of dishonesty and many cases have been fought over the subject.

It also works in our favour to look after ourselves, given the guidelines that medical authorities give us. These guidelines are also passed on to life insurance companies and they will make reductions in our premiums if we can show we are living a healthy lifestyle.

But do they have a responsibility to assess all the latest findings from tests run by the authorities to then further reduce premiums for life insurance?

A woman will find it virtually impossible to get life insurance cover while she is pregnant but do the insurance companies then take into account that with each child born, her risk of developing breast cancer is reduced by 7%? Do they know whether or not she will breastfeed for up to a year, further reducing her risk of breast cancer by another 4%?

Even in families where breast cancer is prevalent, if a woman has an early childbirth, after the initial raise in risk her chances of developing the disease then fall beyond that of a childless mother with familial incidents of the disease.

Studies carried out in Denmark found that mothers of children who suffered cancers in their early years were a third more likely to develop breast cancer than expected. It is thought that this is due to the mother-child interaction during pregnancy and is also hormone related. The risk is further increased if the child is a male.

Do life insurance companies ever ask if the insured were breastfed? This factor alone reduces the risk of adult obesity, with all its life threatening implications, to a level that should merit lower premiums.

Fathers, also, do not go through parenthood without changing their risks of developing cancer, but this is overlooked by life insurance companies. A medical study of one million men in Denmark revealed that fathers are 16% more likely to develop prostate cancer than childless men.

Fathers with six or more children were less likely to develop the most common cause of male cancer, possibly showing that men who are able to have large families have healthier prostates but that does not account for the men that are able, but choose not to, have so many children.

Officials are confused over the results as there is no obvious link. The only thing these results can be attributable to is a difference in lifestyle with single, childless men more likely to look after themselves.

Given that prostate cancer kills 10,000 men every year in the UK, these studies may well be worth looking at from the viewpoint of life insurance companies.

Long term, or life threatening illnesses, also bring about claims from life cover companies when a critical illness cover is included. This also has the capacity to change with modern advancements in medicine.

Illness or disease that carries the necessity for organ transplant would be strong enough to secure a life cover pay out. Organ donations in the UK have been at an all time low and this is of grave concern to the health authorities, due to many people not bothering to fill out organ donor cards.

Due to this, the government are making moves to ensure that every UK citizen is automatically an organ donor in the event of their death unless they carry an ‘opt out’ card. There are concerns that this takes the choice away from people but it just means that if someone is really against the idea, they will go to the minimal effort of filling in a card. It also means that there will now be many more organs to go round, many more lives saved and fewer life cover claims following death.

Add to that the realisation of US scientists who have managed to re-cycle hearts from dead animal bodies and make them beat again, the possibilities will eventually prove endless. Twenty two million people a year worldwide are currently living with the threat of heart failure and this breakthrough could be a life saver for them.

Experiments have already taken place with pig’s hearts because their structure is the nearest of any animal to the human heart. If they could have all their cells washed away just leaving the basic muscle in a process called ‘decellularisation’, and then be injected with cells from the recipient, this would reduce the risk of rejection and save a multitude of lives.

Organ failure is a reason for critical illness cover to be paid out on life insurance and will cover the living expenses of the seriously ill person but if they were luckier than the man in the news recently who has been waiting 25 years for a kidney transplant, their quality of life would be massively improved with a transplant.

Of course, the biggest problem with organ transplants is the recipient’s rejection, even when blood groups have been matched. The body sees the new organ as a foreign body and will reject it, still bringing about death if it cannot be rectified.

Scientists have taken a great deal of interest in a British girl who received a liver transplant, later becoming extremely ill with anaemia. In desperation, doctors took her off the anti-rejection drugs to find her body had taken on the immune system of the organ donor. She had changed blood groups form O Negative to O Positive. This has never been seen before and tests are being carried out into why it happened to help others in the same situation.

Long term illness, cancer and organ failure are a mounting statistic and life cover is there to ease the financial burden for the insured and their family. Lets hop the way scientists are going will mean that insurance pay outs will decrease as quality of life increases.

Insurance expert Catherine Harvey looks at the effects onlife cover of organ transplants. To find out more please visit http://www.theidol.com/

We’re all aware that the unexpected happens which is why we take out life insurance. We even take out serious illness cover with our life insurance. But there are many things that UK residents take for granted. One such thing being that if we fall ill, we expect the NHS to take care of us. Yes, there will be waiting lists – a morbid fact of life – but once we get there we generally expect good health care that will see us leaving hospital on the mend.

It seems for a large majority of people, particularly the elderly, this is just not the case. In fact, one in five people now leave hospital malnourished. Food being a basic staple that is certainly not in short supply in this country yet many sick and vulnerable people are left wanting.

Hospital food is notoriously unappetising, another of those life facts, but it should still reach certain standards. However, it would seem that there are not enough nurses, or they are too busy, to help feed the frail and elderly. Food is often left on a tray for them, just teasing them while they sit there and starve.

Life insurance covers serious illness but it doesn’t cover a visit to hospital that will actually make matters worse. Hospital staff are failing to spot signs of malnutrition which is a common cause orconsequence of illness, especially in the elderly.

Malnutrition affects every organ of the body, increasing the risk of infection and slowing the recovery rate from any medical procedure. Statistics show that 162 pounds million worth of hospital meals were thrown away last year which seems like utter madness when so many patients are starving.

If the NHS can afford this wastage, surely they could employ a few more nurses to help with feeding? A person may not have an illness serious enough to warrant a life insurance claim when they are admitted to hospital but they could certainly meet the criteria when they leave!

When it comes to the NHS wasting money, you have to look at how they have tripled spending on the cost of Viagra to a whopping 58 pounds million in 2006. Granted, erectile dysfunction can be a miserable condition and detract from the enjoyment of life, but so does grotty hospital meals and malnutrition!

It is, however, non life threatening and of no cost whatsoever to life insurance companies. It can be an early sign of heart disease, with an apparent 50 – 75% of undetected heart disease sufferers living with this condition. Years ago, erectile dysfunction was one of those things people of a certain age or with a certain condition learnt to accept and live with. Would this 58 pounds million not be better spent on detecting heart disease itself?

Doctors are only supposed to prescribe Viagra to patients with certain conditions but it is a pricey business. With nearly two million men in the UK who have genuine medical reasons for erectile dysfunction, it would appear that only 10% of this total will actually seek help. If this 10% cost 58 pounds million, then thank goodness they don’t all do it.

Figures show this is a worthwhile condition to fund because the problem can contribute to 20% of relationship break ups. While the happiness of the nation is important, is it really worth spending this sort of money on a non-life threatening condition when so many NHS patients are starving?

Alzheimer’s is a degenerative mental illness that can onset quickly, or slowly, and last for years. It is a desperately sad way to see your loved ones finish off their days and the extra income from health insurance will help with the necessities of life.

However, there is hope. Drugs are available to delay the onset once symptoms are beginning to show and sufferers can continue to function normally for some time. Due to be widely available this summer is a new blood test to detect the possibilities of this disease up to six years before it takes hold.

This should have the advantage of potential victims being able to implement lifestyle changes to give themselves the best chance of holding off the illness for as long as possible, such as increased exercise to increase blood flow to the brain and a healthier diet. Although there is no definitive proof that these work, some people swear by them and with 500 new cases diagnosed in the UK every day, it has to be worth trying.

It seems that money really is everything in this world though as this new test has raised concerns that health insurance companies will try to force this test on people of a certain age, thus pushing up their premiums.

The test is based on measuring proteins in the blood and can distinguish between Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Motor Neurone disease and patients will be given a score based on the laws of probability. Probability is not certainty and would it be just of the health insurance companies to impose higher costs on that basis?

Continuing the fight against this disease are the researchers at Aberdeen University who claim to have found a definite link between consuming Omega 3 oils, as found in oily fish, nuts and seeds and the onset of Alzheimer’s. So the old adage that fish is brain food seems to be true and not just a ploy by your mother to get you to eat it.

Further news for those interested in developments in the field of this disease comes from the US in the form of experimental trials that are due to begin with a drug that claims to reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s within minutes. The drug has so far been used to treat arthritis and during treatment for several patients it was noted with surprise that certain things happened as an apparent side effect.

Video evidence has come to light of an elderly man who was shown to be in the full throes of Alzheimer’s before being injected with the drug. Within five minutes, not only was he functioning quite normally but recognised his wife for the first time in years.

It was found that levels of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) is up to twenty five times higher in the fluid surrounding the brain of Alzheimer’s patients. The drug was found to bind itself to excess TNF, deactivating it. When injected directly into the spine at the base of the neck, the drug has a fast route to where it is needed and results have varied between gradual improvements after a course of treatments to virtually instant reversal. Some patients have even recovered enough to start driving again.

This drug is not yet licensed for use in the treatment of Alzheimer’s and further tests are required to authenticate these claims, but the outlook is hopeful. If it wasn’t for the money, of course.

Because the drug is directly injected into the spine it requires fully trained staff and there is concern that this will be an obstacle. Maybe this is where health insurance will come into play.