Health Insurance cover is much useful in an unfortunate event when one gets ill and needs a major surgery/treatment/hospitalization. It helps minimize hospitalization expenses that burn a big hole in the pocket reducing financial losses without affecting productive working years. It reduces the financial stress of providing quality medical treatment required while undergoing a treatment or medical emergency at the hospital.
Life Insurance on the other hand covers the eventuality of death & helps the family cut the financial burden during hard times. Life insurance cover is important and necessary to create a financial cushion for one’s dependents. An active Life Insurance policy becomes a financial backbone to the family members of the deceased in their absence, however, equally important are policies like Health, Personal Accidents and Critical illness offered by General & Standalone Health Insurance Companies.
With rise of new age diseases, we should not ignore the facts about death and physical disabilities due to road accidents which remain one of the leading causes of death. Death due to loss of life in an accident may be covered by Life insurance policy, but accidents which lead to disability, which could be partial or permanent, the financial implications could result in a disaster to one’s self & to his/her family.
Health Insurance Cover offered by Life insurance companies are in form of riders over a base term policy, which play’s its role in a specific eventuality. The basic difference between health covers of general and life insurance companies is that General & Health Insurers Companies provide indemnity plans that reimburse hospitalization costs while, Life Insurance Companies mostly offer benefit health plans that pay a fixed amount to deal with particular illness, financial cover over and above opted basic Sum Assured. Life insurance companies cannot offer pure indemnity based health insurance policies unlike General & Standalone Health Insurance Companies.
Personal accident by General Insurance or PA rider attached to a life cover
Personal Accident insurance covers not only provide monetarily support in an event of accidental death for the dependents but also extend financial support especially when diseased is immobilized irrespective if the physical immobility is permanent or temporary in nature. In any form of Insurance, personal accident cover is important but one should know the major differences in benefits offered by both Life & General Insurance Companies.
Riders attached to a Life Insurance policy generally provide coverage for only accidental deaths and permanent disabilities. In order to provide complete protection, Personal accident covers offered by General & Standalone health insurance companies provide wide range of benefits in addition to accidental death, permanent total disablement, permanent partial disablement and temporary total disablement. Hospital confinement allowance, Ambulance charges, transportation cost for carriage of dead body to home including funeral charges, cost of clothing damaged in the accident, compensation towards education fund for dependent children, benefit for loss of employment as a consequence of permanent total disability are also now-a-days covered in these standalone personal accident policies.
Some new age Insurance Companies offer comprehensive personal accident policies, where in many allied covers are offered as optional covers like Adventurous sports cover, lifestyle modification cover, convalescence benefit, Rehabilitation cover, Travel Expenses Benefit etc.
Cancer Protection cover offered by Life Insurance & General Insurance Companies
Cancer protection covers are specifically designed individual cover for insured customers. These kinds of Insurance policies are benefit plans designed to offer financial assistance to insured diagnosed with disease. Cancer-specific policies offers lump sum monetary benefit for the insured to deal with various costs associated with disease diagnosis and treatment, including but not limited to hospitalization, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, etc. Cancer specific policies offered by Life & General Insurance companies in market provide monetary compensation usually payable at various stages of Cancer diagnosis like minor, major and critical stage. Though General & Standalone Insurance companies provide Individual plans, there are some Life Insurance companies who provide family floater plans under Cancer Policies. Under Indemnity Health Insurance coverage of General & Life Insurance Products, treatment cost of Cancer is covered up to Sum Insured, subject to cancerous condition not preexisting to inception of the Policy.
Critical Illness covers offered by Life Insurance and General Insurance Companies
Regardless of hospital expenses, Critical Illness Policies provides a fixed lump sum amount equal to the sum insured, on the diagnosis of any of the pre-specified/listed critical illnesses. Critical illness cover can be taken either as a standalone policy from any General Insurance company, as an add on with base indemnity policy or as a rider with life insurance policy. In any form, it is a defined benefit plan. When opted as an Add On or rider, Sum Insured in General Insurance Critical illness policy or Sum Assured in Life Insurance Critical Illness policy is generally restricted to the specific percent or equal to Sum Insured/Sum assured of base plan. Flexibility to choose a high cover for critical illness may be lost, if one opts for Critical Add On or Rider in either of insurance form, so it is always advisable to opt for Standalone Critical illness policy with flexibility for high Sum Insured, that may be possible in case of critical illness cover offered by General & Standalone health insurance companies.
The upside of all of these forms of insurance is that they address the financial challenges one might face in an unfortunate event of accident or medical emergency.