Imagine you went for a regular checkup and you found out that you have stage 1 colorectal cancer, which is quite common among people in Singapore. What do you do then? Get yourself properly checked and, if required, go for treatments and surgeries. But now the real question arises, which is, is your current healthcare plan good enough to cover the expenses of your cancer treatment? Now it doesn’t need to be cancer; nowadays, any serious illness can cause a huge dent in your bank account. So if you’re not prepared with a proper critical illness insurance plan, you can be in a lot of trouble. Now what we are going to discuss today is early critical illness insurance in Singapore. The question which now arises is why early? Why get a healthcare plan in your 20s when almost nothing can happen to you. That is exactly what we want to discuss today.
What Exactly Is A Critical Illness Insurance Plan
Before we get into why we need an early critical insurance plan, let us understand what a critical illness insurance plan is or, as it is known worldwide, a CI insurance plan.
What happens in such a plan is that when you are diagnosed with an illness covered by the plan, you get a fixed lump sum of money you can use to pay for your treatment. Unlike other healthcare plans, where you get only a part of the money at a time, you get the whole money all at once in the case of a critical illness insurance plan.
There are some rules associated with it. The first and foremost rule is that the payout which you will receive for your illness needs to fall under the definition of critical illness insurance. This means that to give an example, the plan won’t give you anything if you have stage 1 cancer. The plan will give you a full payout when you have stage 4 cancer. This is exactly how a regular critical Illness insurance plan looks like. If you want a plan that will also take care of you and pay you during the initial stages, you must opt for early-stage critical illness insurance.
Some other rules are that you cannot claim a payout before 90 days since your plan’s start date is over. Once you are diagnosed, you need to wait for 30 days since your diagnosis date to get your full payout.
Do you need an early critical illness insurance plan?
Now that we understand how a critical illness insurance plan works, the only question that is left to be discussed is whether you need one. Let’s take a look at the following reasons:
- Genetics: If you have a family history of diabetes, cancer, or something specific like colorectal cancer, which is quite common in Singapore, then it is quite natural for you to have them as well. Check your family history as to whether there is any common genetic illness or not. If there is something like that, there’s a huge possibility that you might get it too. In such a case, it is always advisable to have a Critical illness insurance plan ready because you never know when the illness will hit you, but you know that it will.
- Dependent: If you support a family or your old parents, you know how important the value of money is. If suddenly, a huge amount of money is required because of your health issues; it can get quite troublesome, isn’t it? Hence you need a critical illness insurance plan. If you have a plan which will give you a lump sum of money, you can easily use that money for all your hospital bills.
- Safety net: Last but not least, one of the major reasons behind having any insurance form is having a safety net. Once you have your insurance, you don’t need to worry about financial issues regarding a health emergency anymore. You can save and spend however you like because you will know that you have a safety net in case of a medical emergency.
A few myths about Critical Illness insurance
Now that we have discussed everything about critical Illness insurance, let’s make sure that you know everything about critical illness insurance. Hence we are going to discuss a few myths regarding CI insurance which people believe so that you are not confused:
- CI insurance is not the same as a mediclaim: People often confuse between the two. A mediclaim will only give you a part of your hospital bill. The amount of money you will get depends on your illness and your hospital bill. On the other hand, a CI insurance plan will give you the whole sum of money you promised, irrespective of your hospital bill.
- You don’t need CI insurance when you are young: Nowadays due to our lifestyle it can be seen that illnesses which never occurred to young people before are now happening to them. So there are many illnesses which young people are getting diagnosed with. CI insurance doesn’t exactly have a minimum age, so it’s a myth that you shouldn’t take a CI insurance plan when you are young.
- Your CI insurance plan will cover all kinds of illnesses: A CI insurance plan gives you a lump sum of money altogether immediately, so it is quite a given that you wouldn’t get this money unless the illness is pretty severe. So you won’t be getting this money if you have something like a common cold. There’s a list of illnesses that every company will provide, which will have the illnesses listed, and if you have them, you’ll get the money.
Conclusion
There are a lot of insurance companies like HLAS maid insurance in Singapore, where most people go for early critical illness insurance. Nowadays, everyone in their 20s is getting insurance because they are smart, and they can see that any disease can come at any age. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.
