Often people get confused between health insurance and critical illness rider though both of them are quite different from each other. Both are equally important for a person for better prevention and protection from sudden diseases and ailments. Where critical illness rider is added to the main life insurance to cover some specific conditions of illness and diseases to the

amount you have bought the cover for and health insurance pays you off the actual expenses done by you before, after or during the time of hospitalization. Both the services pay according to the terms and conditions listed at the time of the agreement of the policy. Here are the main points, which differentiate the health insurance and critical illness rider from each other. One needs to know the difference clearly to avoid certain issues and problems if created because of the confusion after buying the schemes.

Critical illness rider payment takes a time period of at least 30 days to pay off your sum that too after checking up all the hospital discharged papers, medical bills and everything whereas health insurance directly pay off your medical expenses and bills directly to the hospital which saves lots of the stress, tension and time of your family which is required to take care of the diseased person of the family.

Critical illness rider is attached for a specific time limit as for 10 years, 15 years or 20 years and pays you off only if you suffered any of the mentioned disease of the policy in that time limit. Health insurance you have to buy every year.

Critical illness rider gives you coverage for some primary diseases, specific illnesses, certain pregnancy complications and certain complications in a newborn child as congenital anomalies in newborn child. Most of the covered illnesses are same in every insurance company whereas some of them are specific in company to company.

In most of the cases having just health insurance is not sufficient to cover your medical expenses because the amount of coverage is not very high in case of health insurance. Critical illness rider can cover your disease for high expenditure also. So to get considerable relief from the medical expenditure you have to have both the things for better coverage.

Health insurance can be taken for anybody in the family who fits in the age and heath criteria set by the company but critical illness is an add on which can be bought only for those who already have a life insurance policy whereas health and age criteria is there too.

Health insurance pays off the actual medical expenses, in critical illness rider a fixed amount if predetermined for your policy and you get a sum of it depending on the disease diagnosed.

Here health insurance company directly pay off the expenses to the hospital in critical illness rider the policy holder has to wait after the diagnosis and the claim for a month to get the settlement done. The time period might be different in different life insurance companies.

Section 80D of Income Tax Act 1961 give deduction from taxable income if the premium paid for health insurance is up to rupees 10,000. If its the case of senior citizens then the deductible taxable income is up to 15,000. In case of critical illness rider section 80 C of income tax act 1961 is applicable.

A specific amount has to be paid that is determined as per the age and health status of the person whereas in critical illness rider an extra premium amount has to be paid along with the base police cover.

The cover and time period of the critical illness rider cannot exceed the sum assured of the base amount and period of the policy and the rider gets terminated once you have made the claim. You need to add the rider again if you want to cover up the diseases. Though even health insurance has the limit for the amount of coverage but it has to be taken on annual basis where it covers the expenses of doctors visits, surgical expenses, test and other daily hospital expenses which gives a person whole lot of relief.

Critical illness rider is a wise choice for those who have a family history of certain diseases as cancer and heart attacks. It should be a must to have a good coverage of critical illness rider with your base policy if you have some hereditary diseases in your family history. Health cover should be a must for everybody to easily pay off the medical bills of your medical expenses.

A health care policy takes care of the immediate expenses and cost involved in your treatment and gives you peace of mind, makes you relaxed from the urgently required money for the treatment. To cover the huge bills of serious illness as cancer treatment, health insurance cover might not be sufficient so one needs to cover oneself with critical illness rider.

So when knows all the aspects about health insurance and critical illness rider, one can wisely make a decision for choosing any of these two depending on the requirement and if one can work our well, one can take coverage from both the services.

For immediate help health insurance is very useful as it has tie up or contract with several nursing homes and health care center to provide cashless service for the treatment of their policyholders. Both the policies do require certain test before issuing the police but they depend on the age also. They too require certain identity proofs. Critical illness rider policy gives the policy documents as a contract with the company as a proof and health insurance policy provides you with an identity card which has your picture and personalized details which if you show to the health care centers where the company have their contract with, avail you the cashless service. This service is very beneficial at the time of emergency.