Individual & Family · Critical Illness
A diagnosis arrives with bills your health plan never sees.
Treatment is what health insurance handles. The mortgage during six months off work, the drive to a specialist three states away, the deductible due in January — that’s what a critical illness policy is for. It pays you cash, and you decide.
Why people buy it
These diagnoses aren’t rare
~2.1 million
new cancer diagnoses projected in the U.S. this year
~795,000
strokes in the U.S. each year
every 40 sec.
someone in the U.S. has a heart attack
How it works
Four steps, start to payout
Choose a benefit amount
You pick the lump sum — say $25,000 — and pay a premium based on it, your age, and your health.
A covered diagnosis happens
Later, a doctor diagnoses a condition your policy lists and defines.
The money comes to you
The carrier pays the benefit directly — not to a hospital, to you.
You decide what it’s for
Deductibles, the mortgage, travel to treatment, groceries while you’re not working. No receipts required.
Commonly covered
The conditions these policies name
- Heart attack
- Stroke
- Cancer (as defined by the policy)
- Major organ transplant
- End-stage renal failure
- Coma
- Loss of sight or hearing
- Paralysis
The detail that decides everything: each policy defines these conditions in its own precise language, and the definitions differ between carriers. Two policies can both say “heart attack” and pay differently. Compare the definitions, not the brochures — that’s the part we do with you.
Fika makes it easy
We read the definitions out loud.
Critical illness is a product where the fine print is the product. We compare covered-condition lists and definitions across carriers, check waiting periods and exclusions, and pair it with accident coverage when both gaps are worth closing. Free, no pressure, no spam.
FAQs
Critical illness, answered
This is the question that matters most, and the answer is always in the policy’s definitions — not in the marketing. Carriers define each condition precisely (what stage of cancer qualifies, what evidence a heart attack requires), and those definitions vary meaningfully between companies. Reading them with you, out loud, is part of what we do before you sign anything.
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