Roomie asked me about an ‘offer’ she received from her bank, to enroll in United States Life accident insurance. I distrust all unsolicited ‘offers’, whether by mail, email, phone, in person, or whatever, and usually ignore them. But I told her I’d see what I could find out about this plan. Here’s the offer:
Intensive Care (confinement)
$800/day for 365 days, up to $292,000, per occurrence.
Hospital (confinement)
$400/day for 365 days, up to 146,000, per occurrence.
Emergency room (outpatient car)
Up to $150 per accident.
The cost is $15/month.
Roomie is a student working on her BS in Nursing. She works part-time as an RN. She does not have insurance. The U.S. Life plan is for accidents only (excluding the usual stuff, plus excluding injuries sustained in a privately-flown aircraft). It is not ‘health insurance’, and does not cover illness. The odds of having an accident are small. But if one should occur, this coverage would be all she has. And it’s only $15/month. Hell, I spend more than that gambling, with odds of winning as high as nearly 176 million to one. She stands a much better chance of crashing her truck, slipping on the ice in Winter, or injuring herself with power tools. On the other hand, I have a distrust of unsolicited offers and I suspect them to be scams.
Does anyone know anything about United States Life, accident insurance policies in general, or any helpful information?
I don’t have any real experience with this but I will give you a bump by adding my two cents. This coverage seems so minimal as to be hardly worth it. The ER coverage is pitiful. I haven’t been to the ER in 20 years, but back then just a few stitches ran $300. If she needed any diagnostic testing or surgery, this coverage would leave her just slightly less bankrupt.
Seconding the above poster - $800 a day for Intensive care is bare bones; she could pay that much less w/ a negotiated cash rate. She’s better off w/ AFLAC.
It is part of AIG, operating in New York.
I thought that as well. I have no idea how much ER or inpatient care costs, but I thought it must be a couple-thousand dollars per day for inpatient, and $150 in the ER might cover a couple of aspirin and an adhesive strip.
What does AFLAC cover for $15/month?
Roomie works in a rehab facility, so it’s not comparable to a hospital. They do offer insurance (even for part-time), but she missed the enrollment period. I assume she’ll opt for that when it’s open again. But I don’t know how long she’ll stay, since she rally wants to work in hospice care.
The coverage offered is pathetic.
My hospital stay was over 6,000/day for ICU.
First few hours in trauma:
CAT scans full body total-23,000
every unit of blood-compatibility testing-375
blood-68
thawing-20
multiply by 50 units
First 18 hours total-103,654
Unless she can get Aflac through work, it’s a lot more expensive than this policy would be.
But health insurance is “real” insurance. An accident requiring time in the ICU is going to bankrupt her regardless if she gets this coverage or not, making it totally worthless. Yes, real insurance is pretty expensive compared to $15 a month. But I’m betting the number of claims they deny is very, very high. You can bet there will be lots of stupid fine-print exclusions on this policy, too. They make the policy limits sound impressively high, but nobody is in ICU for a year. You would either die or get transferred to a normal room.
I was in the ER once for less than 2 hours and it cost me almost $2k (kidney stone). I couldn’t have wiped my ass with $150. And they didn’t even dispense any pain medication, I had to go fill it at Walgreens! (and paid out of pocket, fuckers)
Tell her to just say no, OP. If she’s a traditional student, she can stay on her parents’ policy well into her 20s. If she’s an older non-trad student (or her parents are uninsured), hopefully nothing happens to her between now and when she can get insurance through her employer. This policy is not worth 25 cents a month, much less $15. She could save up that $15 a month for 6 months, and afford an uninsured checkup at your school’s clinic.