If you could predict the onset of serious diseases in your life, you would not have required critical illness insurance cover for yourself. If you could look into the future and avert such conditions through prior medical interventions the need for critical illness insurance would not arise.
Since this is not even a remote possibility, you need to buy a critical illness insurance plan to prepare for the worst. The insurance policy ensures optimum medical care if you ever fall prey to severe illnesses.
In India, a large number of people succumb to critical illness every year due to a lack of proper healthcare. Estimated deaths every year are:
Cardiovascular or Coronary Heart-Related Ailments: 24 Lakhs
Lung or Respiratory Ailments: 11.60 Lakhs
Cancer or Tumours (Late Detection): 5.56 Lakhs
Liver Ailments: 2.17 Lakhs
Kidney Failure: 2 Lakhs
If you glance through the tentative cost of medical care for the illnesses mentioned above, you can understand how difficult it can be to arrange funds at a moment’s notice.
Cardiac Arrest Angioplasty: INR 3.5 Lakhs
Lung Disease: INR 20 Lakhs
Cancer: INR 10 Lakhs
Liver Transplant: INR 18 Lakhs
Kidney Failure: INR 4 Lakhs
Skull Base Surgery for Brain Tumour: INR 4 Lakhs
Breast or Prostrate Cancer: INR 1.5 Lakhs
These costs are tentative, and by the time you recover fully, you can become bankrupt.
A well-planned critical illness insurance cover will help you and your loved ones endure the financial storm and emerge in good health. Unexpected visits to your doctor or unaffordable medical care costs will no longer give you nightmares.
You may have a term plan, but you can be under-insured. This revelation will hit you hard when your exposure to financial problems would suddenly acerbate once a critical illness is diagnosed. While availing of the critical illness insurance rider with a term plan, cross-check that the sum assured is a minimum of fifteen times your present salary.
Ordinary health insurance plans with no critical illness rider will merely reimburse the actual expenses borne by you up to the sum insured in a registered hospital. There is also an upper cap which soon gets exhausted. The treatment costs for life-threatening diseases start from the moment you are diagnosed with one. As such, a normal health plan is next to nothing compared to a critical illness insurance policy. A critical illness rider complements your normal health insurance plan and provides coverage for the huge expense you are expected to incur.
You may be apprehensive of contracting a particular disease, say liver cancer, based on the health records of your predecessors. Going by your family’s health history, you have the freedom to purchase a disease-specific critical illness insurance plan to shield you against potential expenses in the future by paying you a lump sum amount.
For surviving the monetary implications of contracting life-threatening illnesses, a critical illness insurance plan is the best insurance tool. With critical illness rider, you can get yourself covered against a wide array of diseases at a nominal premium. Not only financially, but you are also protected at emotional levels to.
As many as 34 diseases are covered in critical illness insurance plans offered by different insurance companies. Some of the major illnesses covered are:
Cardiac Arrest/ Stroke
Aorta Graft Surgery
Alzheimer’s Disease
Benign Brain Tumour
Organ Transplantation (Major)
Liver Disease
Multiple Sclerosis Aorta Graft Surgery
It can be hard to predict the future events of your life accurately. A critical illness insurance plan drives away your worries by allowing increasing or decreasing the scope of coverage in a phased manner during different stages of life.
You can modify the coverage after marriage, childbirth, and other important events of life. Based on your health graph, you can choose to include or discard coverage for some illnesses. The premium would be recalculated based on your coverage needs.
Once you get diagnosed with an illness covered under a critical illness insurance plan, the agreed lump-sum amount will be paid by the insurer. This payment covers treatment-related costs at all stages of the ailment. You can spend this amount for settling hospital bills, paying loan EMIs, catering to household expenditures, paying the school fees of children, etc. This amount can also be utilized for medical treatment abroad. You are free to use this lump-sum amount in any way you like.
The lump-sum payment provided by a critical illness insurance plan will serve as an income replacement for you. You will never reach the brink of being strapped for cash. A complete claim pay-out will reach your bank account once you are diagnosed with any of the covered illnesses and the claim is approved by the insurer.
You can also take advantage of income tax benefits with a critical illness insurance policy. The premium payable for the plan qualifies for deduction during tax computation. Also, the critical illness insurance pay-out is completely tax-free as per Section 80D of the Income Tax Act, 1961.
If you feel that the treatment available in a foreign hospital is better than that in India, you can opt for the same. Irrespective of the location from where you get yourself treated, the promised lump sum would be paid in advance.
Conclusion
A critical illness insurance plan serves as your second layer of protection if you already have a health insurance policy. If you feel vulnerable to life-threatening ailments arising from modern lifestyles, the critical illness insurance cover is your best bet.
Going by the major benefits, it is undeniably worth buying a critical illness insurance plan. The plan allows you to stay relaxed on financial, mental, and emotional fronts as well as facilitate speedy recuperation once you contract a serious disease. Be wise and opt for a critical illness insurance plan now!
Also Read: Advantages of Critical Insurance Policy
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