In our lifetime, we should suffer from a lot of hardship, setback and misery. Perhaps no body could free from these unhappy things. Accidents and illnesses are unhappy things to talk about, but no one can expect to live a lifetime without having some kind of accident or becoming ill. Some accidents and illnesses are serious and may result in long periods of invalidism.
The newspapers contain spectacular accounts of accidents in the street and highways and public places, but nearly as many accidents occur around the home. Somebody trips on a rug. Somebody falls off a stepladder. Somebody is careless in cooking dinner, and is burned. Accidents incurred in the playing of sports and swimming also accounts for a large number of injuries, big and little. Despite constant campaigns to reduce the number of accidents, there are still approximately 100,000 accidental deaths and nearly 9,000,000 non-fatal injuries in the United States each year.
In has been estimated that around 3,000,000 people are constantly ill in the United States throughout the year and that over half the illness is caused by respiratory diseases, chiefly colds and influenza.
The pain and suffering caused by accidents and illness tell only half the story. Loss of time from school and work and medical and hospital expenses often make the pain seem worse. Money spent in this country for doctors, services, hospitalization, nursing care, drugs, medicines, X-rays, and special treatments, amounts to a huge annual sum. Added to this expense is another much larger amount that is lost to wage earners throughout the nation by reason of their loss of wages or income while sick or otherwise disabled.
Accident and health insurance is a form of insurance devised to protect against these economic losses. It protects the earnings of wage earners and finishes financial aid to the family of the breadwinner by the payment of his doctor and hospital bills. Today, business and professional men, farmers, industrial workers, clerks, and those engaged in various occupations, whose earning power is shut off for a week, a month, or sometimes years, because of accidents or illness can insure themselves against this financial loss by accident and health insurance.
Protection is available to all types of workers and the cost (called the premium) ranges from a few cents a day for small or limited policies to a month for policies paying larger amounts (called indemnities). Policy is another name for an insurance contract. Most accidents and health policies are cancelable policies--that is, they are sold for a definite term such as a week, a month, or a year, similar to contracts of fire insurance and automobile liability insurance. There are, however, policies which cannot be canceled or terminated by the insurance company until the policyholder reaches an age at which he usually has no further earning power--most often at sixty or sixty-five years. These non-cancelable policies cost more than the cancelable policies.