Critical Illness Insurance: What Is It and Who Needs It?

Critical illness insurance provides much more than your standard health illness plan, especially during medical emergencies like a heart attack or cancer. Here is all that you should know about critical illness insurance and why you need one.

Health alignments do not come announced, and such health emergencies shatter you emotionally and also ruin you financially. The exorbitant expenses incurred during a life-threatening illness like a heart attack or cancer cannot be supported just by a basic health insurance policy but would require a critical health insurance policy. Here are the key takeaways of having a critical health illness insurance.

What is Critical Illness Insurance?

Critical illness cover is a plan that provides insurance for specific life-threatening diseases like heart attack, cancer which normal health insurance policies do not cover.

In case of critical health alignments, expenses of treatments are too high with frequent visits to the hospital, cost of medicines, multiple tests and this cannot be taken care just with a simple health insurance policy.

Should you buy a Critical Illness Insurance if you have a Mediclaim policy?

 For the treatment of any critical disease time and money is important, and if the bread earner of the family suffers from this major ailment, then the person would require skipping their jobs for the treatment or leave it permanently.

So here finances take a toss in two ways

  1. Family loses the monthly income with bread earner having to skip the job.
  2. And the increasing expenses of treatment, hospital charges, high cost of medical tests and surgical expenses if required.

In such case, the Mediclaim only takes care of the hospitalization charges. Still, a critical illness cover is beyond just the hospital charges, it takes care of the doctor consultation fees, regular medical tests cost or cost of the medicines.

In addition to the above expenses, a critical illness cover also pays- out any outstanding EMI paid against the home loan or car loan. Here taking a critical illness cover resists your hard-earned money from sweeping out in just a month.

Who needs critical health insurance?

Life- threatening diseases can strike unexpectedly to anyone, and family isn’t just worried about the illness but also the expenses that will be incurred during the treatment. This leads to a loss of income, and often the expenses are incurred from the savings otherwise kept for fulfilling long term goals. So below are the pointers to understand who needs a critical health insurance.

 Having a family history of critical illness- Though not all but many illnesses are hereditary, and with one in the family history has a high risk of inheriting the same. Members with the history of any critical illness in the family should opt for a critical illness plan.

Primary earners of the family- It is paramount for the bread earner of the family to have a critical illness plan, as income takes a big hit if the primary breadwinner suffers from any major health disease.

Having jobs with a lot of work pressure- Studies indicate that those who work under high pressure have an increased risk of developing a critical health disease. Employees who suffer from job pressure should go for a critical illness plan to ward off any financial exigencies caused due to any serious health ailment.

People with the age of 40 and above- People who are above the age of 40 are susceptible to developing serious health ailments. Moreover, at this age, the person has a better financial position and can easily pay the premium amount.

Critical illness plans stand a way ahead of simple health insurance plans as it covers the entire medical expenses and not just the pre and post-hospitalization expenses.