List Only

How can Aflac insurance refuse to cover cancer?

Heres the situation, my mother just signed up for a health insurance through Aflac (by way of walmart employment) and she added on the cancer insurance. After getting the insurance she turned up with some skin cancer on her forehead, she read in her plan afterwards that if she was to get skin cancer again in the next ten years they wouldn't cover it, but if she got another form of cancer they would cover it. Now my real question is how greedy is it that if you start to have some ongoing problems with cancer they won't cover it more then once. How can they do that, it doesn't seem ethical what so ever to refuse treatment of a disease that has a good chance of recurring. would they refuse someone with high blood pressure meds if after 6 months if they got themselves balanced and upon noticing that the person is "Healthy" the insurance company refuses to cover any more med for high blood pressure?

Public Comments

1. Any insurance is set up to deal with certain situations. In this case, recurring bouts of cancer. They and their customer have decided that particular restriction is needed for this price point of insurance. If they removed it, they would have to raise the rates, probably more than WM is willing to pay. You get what you pay for, and in this case, it has a serious limitation, it seems.
2. That's how they keep rates low for everyone else.
3. Here in Britain there have been a lot of problems with this sort of thing. People take out an insurance policy and then a couple of years down the line they develop a health problem which is supposedly covered by their policy. When they make a claim the insurer refuses to pay out as the person has not mentioned some medical problem, usually unrelated to the claim illness. A lot of people have contacted a consumer advice programme on BBC1 which is called "Watchdog" They have a web page which is accessed through the BBC web site. I don't know if you can access it from where you are but they may have an archive where you can view some of the cases. Good luck and I hope your mother has no more problems with cancer. My younger brother had colon cancer, but they didn't find it in time and he was too weak to start treatment. Diagnosed in September he died in the early hours of 25 December six years ago. (When I recently took out a life insurance policy I had to tell the insurance company about him as there is a slight chance that it is inherited.)
4. You've just experienced the insurance gamble. You're betting against the insurance company that you'll collect on the benefits. The Insurance company is betting you're not going to collect. Guess what? They hold the cards; house rules. In any case, you lose. From a medical web site: People who have had skin cancer once are at risk for getting it again. Anyone who has been treated for skin cancer of any kind should have a checkup at least once a year. About 20% of skin cancer patients experience recurrence, usually within the first two years after diagnosis. Check with the insurance company. Are they saying that they will not pay for the removal of another lesion during the next 10 years? Removing a lesion is a lot cheaper than treating cancer after it has taken hold. The insurance company knows this risk. 20% first two years, maybe a different 20% years 3 & 4, maybe another 20% years 5 & 6, a different 20% in years 7 & 8 and the last 20% in years 9 & 10. Not saying bay any means that 100% of the people will get a recurrence, but I find it interesting that they use 10 years as the cutoff and the stats show that 20% may have another bout in the first 2 years after treatment. 2/10 = 1/5 = 20%.
5. You clearly don't understand what cancer insurance is or what it is meant to cover. Treatment of cancer falls under a health insurance policy. A cancer insurance policy is a supplement to a person's health insurance policy. It is certainly not meant to cover all of the expenses associated with cancer treatments. Again...that's what the health insurance policy is for. The high blood pressure example you mentioned is not relevant, because cancer treatments and high blood pressure treatments would both fall under the health insurance policy. It sounds like your mom might not have completely understood the different types of benefits she signed up for. I'd suggest that she talk with her benefit representative, agent, or whoever handles explaining that information to her store's employees. It can be difficult to understand benefit information, but there should be someone available through her employer to help explain it so that she understands.
6. Because it's not health insurance. It's a cancer policy. They are apples and oranges. Yes, that would be odd for health insurance to do that which is why they don't do that.
7. first,you should collect some resource by searching the relevant keyword in search engine,if you got good luck there ,then your problem solved.however,if you are not able to find the ideal answer by doing that,here http://www.HealthInsuranceIdeas.info/free-online-health-insurance.htm is the resource i recommend.