Should you buy a Heart/Cancer Cover Plan despite having Health Insurance?

While the world continues to remain heavily under insured in terms of insurance, leaving a wide scope of penetration, it would be safe to say that with every passing year, the count of people gaining awareness and opting for Health Insurance is only increasing. Health Insurance policies are designed to financially support the insured members during a medical eventuality. However, there are also separate critical illness plans now available which are designed around specific illnesses such as Heart, Cancer etc. which begs the question in a lot of people’s mind: Why should I buy these kind of plans when I already have a Health Insurance which covers me adequately?

We did a random conversation with approx. 50 people from different countries and explained the features of a Heart/Cancer Protect plan and whether they would want to go for it. As expected, the response was mostly about “we are already covered”, “we have Health insurance which already covers these illnesses as well” etc. And while it is completely understandable that your Health Insurance Plan might cover for heart and cancer as well, it is not completely a waste of money or even time (that you spend on understanding these plans) to opt for Heart/Cancer protect specific plans.

As per a report from American Health Association, Heart Disease remains the #1 cause of death worldwide and with the effect of COVID-19, the cardiovascular health and mortality is bound to be influenced upwards. In 2019, an estimated 17.9 people died from CVDs (cardiovascular disease), which represents an approx. 32% of all global death. Out of these deaths, more than 80% were due to heart attack and stroke. On the other front, cancer is another leading deadly disease, which not only is a cause of death, but even in cases where people are successfully able to battle cancer, it eats up a major portion of the savings.

Now, while it is completely at the customer’s discretion, below are some of our findings as to why a Heart/Cancer Protect plan is a must have despite the existing Health Insurance plan.

• As stated above, the occurrences of a heart disease or a cancer disease have become quite common thanks to the lifestyle choice, hereditary reasons etc. Both these diseases occur from the youngest of age to the old age as well. Even the fittest of people following proper diet and exercises succumb to these critical illnesses, hence it is ideal to have a separate plan for these two illnesses.
  
• Health Insurance plans may not cover comprehensively for all kinds of conditions related to heart or cancer. They usually have a lot of terms and conditions and capping over which kind of condition can be covered or to what extent.
  
• Even if your health insurance plan is able to cover any kind of minor conditions related to these illnesses, it will eat up your majority sum insured, thus hardly leaving any scope for attending to other medical expenses which might crop up and in turn causing a hole through your pocket.

• In case of Health Insurance, cashless facility is provided only at network hospitals, which to be honest is not something you will think of in case of emergency related to heart or cancer concerns. Heart and Cancer protect plans do not wait for you to produce hospital bills for claim, they provide the pay-out on the diagnosis itself regardless of which hospital you have got yourself diagnosed at.

• Heart and Cancer plans keep the premium fixed for the entire payment term and do not change as per the age bracket.

• On diagnosis of the conditions or disability due to an accident, the future premiums are also waived off in many Heart/Cancer protect plans.

• With a Heart and Cancer cover plan, you are not only able to beat the high medical costs but also able to adjust for your temporary loss of income due to your prolonged visits to hospitals.

• Even if you have any other medical plans, you can still get additional pay-out from Heart/Cancer cover plans thus offering you a peace of mind that your personal savings are left untouched in order to help you battle these two critical illnesses.

We often spend a lot on our lifestyle which may or may not be  necessary but we do that anyways. In order to ensure that we continue our lives maintaining that lifestyle, adding a heart/cancer cover plan will not do any harm to one’s financial stability. If anything, it will only help prolong it.