Winseer:
I agree with you about the bit in red, but totally disagree that insurers fully COVER for this “likely” eventuality, as you put it.This is my beef with insurers of course. If I’m ever “medically retired”, then I’m on the scrapheap of life - NOT showered in benefits, insurance payouts, or symapthies!
The last three people I know who were pro drivers, and got “medically retired” went into a life of poverty, got a secondary illness like Cancer, and died within two years - all three of them.
“Medical Retirement” is most dangerous to life when it has no financial cushion built-in. There isn’t much difference these days between a firm that says it’ll pay Sick Pay, and “Death in service benefit” - than working on an agency ZHC with what one thought was “adequate” insurance cover - only to find that once one crosses that one-way bridge into medical retirement - the money didn’t then materialize…
It is even difficult for the grieving family to obtain a prompt payment after death, as the arguments then ensue that “We’re looking into causality here” plus “The disease we were prepared to cover him for - isn’t the one that just killed him, and his critical illness payments CEASED at his death from Cancer/Chrone’s disease/Multiple Sclerosis”
I was left feeling disgusted at the way the insurance industry was glossed over during the Credit Crunch in 2008… It badly needed REFORM - and got off scott-free from any intrusions into their practices.
As a person “Left Wing on FInancial Matters” - this insurance unaccountability and outright SCAMMING when it comes to “Critical Illness Cover” - happens to be one of my biggest bugbears.
Here’s a clue there’s a massive difference between the terms of a proper income protection policy v those of a ‘critical illness’ one.The former definitely covers anyone for the possibility of being medically retired ‘from their own occupation’.
As for you being left wing if I read it right you were just confirming what’s already there in the form of the ESA work capacity test which effectively means paralysis from the neck down.Thereby making the sickness part of the National Insurance scam a laughable joke and in reality just a form of tax to reduce the tax burden on high earners.Just as Thatcher intended.In which case your ideas are left wing and fix anything how ?.