It's hard to imagine using up $1 million or $2 million of health-insurance benefits. Even with the high cost of medical care, using up that much on your health plan would be a stretch for most folks. That's why few people consider the lifetime caps that are placed on their policies. But they should.

That's because for those who face a health-care catastrophe, it's not hard at all to imagine pressing up against a $1 million or $2 million limit. And once you do, there is no help beyond. Precisely because medicine has gotten so much better, and people with conditions that once killed them can live long lives with the aid of expensive treatments, more of us may one day face that benefit cutoff.

For competitive reasons, more large companies are doing away with health policies that include lifetime caps, figuring the risk is small and the recruiting benefit big. But the same is not true for smaller companies, which may stick by low limits in hopes of keeping costs at bay.

In our lead story, health-care writer Kristen Gerencher looks at the trends in health-policy caps and suggests checking your own policies. Read her Vital Signs column, plus catch Robert Powell's top five tips for buying long-term-care insurance and see why Chuck Jaffe is worried that new rules to curb spam touting microcap stocks may go too far, on Thursday's Personal Finance pages.

If we're going to have health insurance at all, it doesn't make much sense to have lifetime caps on that coverage. How fair is that, to be cut off just when you need help the most?

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Steve Kerch, assistant managing editor/personal finance
skerch@marketwatch.com

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