Monday, August 11, 2014

New Tool for Estimating Cancer Care Costs

Have you ever considered how you’d be able to manage the financial burdens of paying for a serious emergency?  Dealing with a life-limiting condition like kidney and liver failure, heart disease, and other problems can be very costly.  Medical problems in general can be expensive, but in terms of sheer expense, cancer can be one of costliest diseases you can have.

Take a moment to think about some of the basics you have to pay for to treat cancer, including:
  • Doctor’s appointments
  • Lab tests
  • Clinic treatments
  • Procedures
  • Surgery
  • Medicine

The list goes on from there.  A lot of people are unsure of how to bring up finances with their doctors and insurance company, even though it’s something every cancer patient has to deal with.  There is some financial help for cancer patients available, but most will have to look for their own ways to fund their treatment.  Selling your life insurance policy can be an excellent way to offset certain cancer costs.

Making a sound financial decision about your cancer treatment plan may sound difficult, but a recent development may help make it easier.  Oncologists and researchers from the University of Chicago have created a tool to estimate the general expense of a cancer diagnosis and treatment. With the help of over 150 cancer patients, and their own experiences financing their treatment, they developed the Comprehensive Score for Financial Toxicity (COST).

On average, cancer survivors have higher medical expenses, usually as much as $3,000 to $4,000 every year, compared to average medical expenses of other life-limiting conditions.  This is an issue because many cancer patients have decreased income due to an inability to return to work, or the need to reduce hours to continue with treatments.  The study showed that the problems associated with cancer costs aren’t limited to people of a certain income level. People from all walks of life have problems managing medical costs.  Sometimes patients that have higher income levels opt for more expensive treatments and assume that they can afford them. Unfortunately, as costs pile up, they end up finding themselves in debt.


COST is designed to give people a realistic and affordable way to plan for cancer care costs.  As health care prices rise, it will become more difficult to find a way to budget for care.  This tool can help make a lot of difficult financial decisions a little easier to handle.

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Monday, August 4, 2014

What You Need to Know about Senior Life Settlements

For seniors, life settlements can be an important tool for securing their future or that of their family members. Life settlements involve selling a policy to another party in exchange for immediate cash. This is an attractive option especially when retirement or health insurance funds run low. Here’s what you should know about senior life settlements:


  1. Life settlements are legal and carefully regulated. There is a lot of confusion among the general public about what exactly a life settlement is and how it works. Some people worry that selling their life insurance policy to a third party means going through some sort of loophole or that it’s not valid. The truth is that senior life settlements are a well-known part of the insurance industry and that insurance companies perform these transactions regularly. Companies that buy life insurance policies have to follow careful regulations governing their practices, transparency and potential conflicts of interest. This is true whether the buyer is an insurance company or strictly deals in life settlements.
  2. You will not get the full amount of your policy. For seniors, life settlements can be a much-needed way to get a large sum of money quickly. For many seniors a settlement is a great option to pay for unforeseen expenses. But it is important to understand how a settlement works and how much you will make. The buyer will eventually receive your full benefit amount, the amount the policy is for on paper. That benefit will cover the cost they paid you for the settlement and provide the profit margin that makes the senior life settlement industry possible. Thus, there is no way they can pay you the full amount of your policy death benefit. 
  3. You will get more than the surrender value. The good news for seniors is that life settlements do provide a much higher cash value than simply surrendering the policy. Insurance companies generally allow you to “surrender” a life insurance policy, effectively getting a small payment immediately in order to give up your beneficiaries’ rights to the full benefit later. But this surrender value is much, much lower than the befit amount. Senior life settlements pay substantially more than the surrender value.
  4. You can use the payment for anything you want. For many seniors, life settlements are a way to offset burdensome costs, such as unexpected medical bills or the cost of long term care such as assisted living. However, sometimes healthy and active seniors will also utilize life settlements as a way to bolster retirement accounts and maintain the lifestyle they prefer for their golden years. Your settlement money is yours to do with as you see fit. 

Are you considering a life settlement?

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