Nowadays picking the right health insurance policy that fulfils all your necessities can be challenging. You can discover ample medical policies in the market. Normally you may assume that your health insurance policy provides you coverage for several illnesses including critical diseases. However, that is not true.
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What is Critical Illness Insurance?
A normal health plan provides you coverage for all the expenses incurred during treatment and hospitalization. However, a critical illness insurance plan gives you an amount to cover the expenses to diagnose and treat illness. The usual illnesses incorporated under this insurance policy are paralysis, Cancer, heart attack, stroke, and organ transplantation.
The amount provided for your sickness can be utilized for treatment, lost income, or repay debts to support fast recovery. And the ways how you are utilizing this amount depends entirely on you. Since the senior citizens are more prone to the sicknesses listed under this policy, it is recommended to purchase a critical illness health insurance plan under the senior citizen’s policy.
Critical Illness Health Insurance vs Normal Medical Insurance
Having just a health insurance plan that meets all your medical and hospital expenses may not be ideally feasible.
Additionally, you should also opt for a medical plan that covers all the life-threatening diseases. This is because the normal health plans don’t offer any protection against critical sicknesses. And with a critical illness health insurance policy, you can get insured with all the expenditures incurred during life-threatening diseases. So, here we have listed down a few major differences separating critical illness insurance from normal health policy.
Premium Amount
Premiums paid for normal medical plans are more as they cover a larger scope of probable health concerns. Whereas, a critical illness health insurance includes only specific pre-defined health ailments. And whenever you are diagnosed with any of these pre-defined ailments, you are given the complete amount to tackle the expenses involved. Hence, providing you better protection with more economical premiums.
Insurance Coverage:
For both types of health insurance plans, the coverage varies widely. A normal health plan includes coverage for all your medical expenses, hospitalization bills, pre- and post-medical treatment whereas the critical insurance plan covers all the expenses incurred due to your life-threatening sickness.
Also, it differs from person to person based on diseases. It includes income loss, travel costs, and more. This amount can be utilized to treat or improve the lifestyle following the treatment.
Things to Remember while Buying a Critical Illness Insurance
There are certain important things to be taken care of while opting for a critical illness health insurance policy:
- Waiting Period
- Sum Assured
- List of Diseases Covered
Waiting Period:
This is a very common and important point to consider before buying a critical illness health insurance policy. A lot of companies have a certain amount of waiting period added to the policy before allotting it.
Sum Assured:
Always consider the inflation and sky-rocketing costs involved when considering the amount of sum assured in your critical illness health insurance policy.
List of Diseases Covered:
Although the premium rates offered by a critical illness policy are lower, there are only specific pre-defined illnesses covered under this policy. It is recommended to check the entire list of diseases covered to ensure that you can effectively utilize this policy to recover the expenses involved.
Based on the aforementioned points, choose a policy that best suits you. There are various companies like Care Health Insurance, HDFC, etc. that provide you complete coverage for critical illnesses. Check the policy terms in detail and make an informed decision.