Evaluating The Importance of a Critical Illness Insurance Policy

Posted by sammi maheshwari on October 16th, 2017

A critical illness insurance policy, once availed, provides a lump sum amount on the diagnosis of a critical illness in the insured person. Critical illness insurance can be a lifesaver, especially when an individual’s regular medical insurance barely meets the expenses of undergoing treatment or does not cover the same. Treatment costs for critical illnesses can be extremely high, even otherwise financially sound individuals can find it extremely difficult to bear the costs involved in treating life-threatening illnesses, such as cancer, heart or kidney disease.

Why Choose a Critical Illness Policy?

Critical illness cover is to protect one against the future onslaught of life-threatening and/or debilitating illnesses by ensuring that the exorbitant treatment costs can be met. If one is diagnosed with a critical illness in the future with the need for prolonged treatment, this may leave one without work and use-up their life’s savings until regaining their healthier self.  Thus, availing the best critical illness policy can help in two ways – help to meet the sky-high costs involved in treatment for critical illnesses and act as a source of lost income during the treatment period and beyond.

When a person takes a critical illness policy and is diagnosed with a pre-listed critical illness, the policy provides a lump sum amount at the time of diagnosis. This is useful because the paperwork to claim insurance during treatment may take a lot of time and effort that a critically ill person may not be able to do.

The benefits of critical illness cover over a normal health insurance –

People often wonder why they would need to take a critical illness insurance policy, especially when they already have a regular health insurance policy. One thing made clear is that while normal health insurance may be helpful in offsetting some of the cost of treatment of a critical illness, they very often do not cover the entire amount involved in treating critical illnesses. This is because, by nature, treatment costs for critical illnesses are very high. In addition, claiming the sum assured from a health insurance policy can be time-consuming, and depending on the insurance provider, one might have to wait for all hospital bills and records to submit to your provider.

Having a critical illness policy provides one the lump sum amount at the time of diagnosis of the pre-listed critical illness, and therefore one would not have to wait for the treatment and after to receive the amount. In addition, critical illness amounts can cover high treatment costs associated with treating critical illnesses such as cancer, which can cost as much as Rs 20 Lakhs.

Critical Illness policy is vital for individuals with a family history of illness or even people who hail and hearty, as news of ill health does not come with a prior warning. Thus, the benefits are tremendous and far outweigh the cost of procuring such a cover.

However, it is best to carefully review and compare all the critical insurance in India and choose the best critical illness insurance provider that fits one’s needs.