Life & Critical Illness Blog

The American Cancer Society has revealed that cancer death rates in the USA dropped by 19.2 % for men and 11.4% for women over a 15 year period between 1990 and 2005.

The male death reductions were mainly due to decreases to lung, prostate and colon cancer deaths whereas the women’s death rate drop was mainly due to breast cancer and colorectal cancer. These death rate decreases are a result of better treatment and prevention. Obviously cancer was still diagnosed in each case but it was treated and lives were saved.

This is good news in the on-going war with cancer. We all know that medical science and treatment gets more advanced as each year goes by but it is good to actually see some figures to show just how much better treatment is. Even so, more than 1500 people in the USA will have died each day in 2009 from cancer so there is still a huge amount of work to be done.

With critical illness claims settlement history on the up this can only mean that more and more people will realise the benefits of critical illness and buy cover. Over 1.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year in the USA alone so if more of those people had critical illness insurance how many more lives could be saved? There is no doubt that having a lump sum of money can buy better treatment and get that treatment quicker too. Not all cancer treatments are available of national health care plans so if your life depended on it surely it would be worth paying for?

There have never been figures published showing the exact financial impact on families during a cancer or critical illness diagnosis. Of those 1500 people who die each day in the USA how many had critical illness cover and just how much of a difference did it make to the family finances? Of those who didn’t have cover how many faced losing their homes while they were still in hospital because they couldn’t pay their mortgage and household bills?

Critical illness cover is here to stay and as long as critical illness sales continue to rise and cancer death rates continue to fall then everyone will be far better off.