Introduction
Nowadays every household has some form of insurance for protection of their physical assets or life itself. In general terms insurance is considered as any loss for which you pay a specified amount of money at regular intervals in exchange for the assurance that you will receive due compensation on your assets or life; in case of any denoted damage. Insurance contracts are signed to ensure that both parties don’t deviate from the agreement. Any form of insurance policy lasts for a small time period and then needs to be renewed paying further sum of money. In order to protect their lives and for risk management ensuring security of future generations, people have resorted critical illness insurance cover policies, which comprise of a variety of diseases, illnesses and medical conditions.
History
Critical illness insurance cover was initially introduced in the US in 1850, and offered insurance against steam and railroad boat incidents. Around 60 private and public companies were offering insurance by 1866 and the most widely known name was Franklin Health Insurance Company. Soon after the world followed suit implementing similar policies locally as well. The Social Security Act in 1935 is a perfect example of a state established critical illness insurance cover, and to date isn’t offered by many developing countries.
Features
Critical illness insurance is covered by policies in two ways; namely disability and life insurance. Life insurance assumes the fact that the person might not be able to recover from the illness and hence, the financial aftermath of untimely demise is considered. Many companies require their managers and supervisors to obtain a life insurance policy before lending them any money for entrepreneurship. On a personal level many individuals obtain a life insurance policy to ensure that their family members receive financial security as well. Usually these policies last for the term of a year and consist of providing financial compensation to the company who lent money and to the family as well. Disability insurance is actually what completely encompasses critical illness insurance cover. A serious illness or a long term disease covers up the expense required in such an insurance policy. However, there are certain conditions stated in the insurance policy, which must be fulfilled to guarantee the smooth flow of expenses. These policies tend to cover hospitalization costs, doctor consultancy and expense on medicines. Some requirements aren’t paid for, which include food costs, and extended illnesses like comas. Mostly, where people are on life support systems and doctors have lost hope, critical illness insurance cover only a small part of the cost and that too for a limited period of time.
Tips and comments
However, it is the duty of insurance companies to thoroughly investigate every situation or crisis faced by individual. They have a complete check and follow up system making certain that money goes into the right hands. Trained personnel personally double-check hospitalization forms and death certificates, as currently people pretend to be ill and dead, just to get some free cash. If one is caught engaging in this type of fraud the critical illness insurance cover can be cancelled, along with appropriate legal action taken as deemed necessary.
