Insuring a Child’s Life in South Africa
Most of us would love to custom-design our medical insurance policies. We want to ensurethey would protect us financially should we or our children contract terrible illnesses Or should we suffer from a debilitating injury. That’s why insuring a child’s life and health is vital.
Insuring a Child’s Life – Critical Diseases can Ruin you Financially
Foremost when it comes to medical aids is the expenses that are not covered by the medical aid scheme. It could be that a child suffers from major congenital defects that mean multiple operations.
Cancers or injuries might require intensive re-constructive surgery. The expenses around restoring the child’s health again could literally run into hundreds of thousands of rand. In fact the medical aid scheme benefits you are relying on could dry up. That could leave you with huge out-of-pocket costs to contend with.
Insuring a Child’s Life – A Debilitating Illness can Rear Its Head it other Ways
You naturally want cover for those additional expenses that you are likely to incur for your child.
- We all know how difficult it can be finding someone to care for the other children while you are at hospital with a sick child.
- What about travel expenses if your child needs specialised treatment at other facilities and what about the cost of therapy to teach your child new physical skills?
- You might have to take a reduction in salary as you take time off from work.
- If your child has been left an invalid, you may even have to find the money for rehabilitation.
- It may be that you need to make major changes to your home and your car to cater for your now disabled child.
Statistics are revealing that in a child’s first few years of life, the probability of a serious illness is high, dropping off quite a bit after that until adulthood when it could start again. This would lead you to expect that the medical cover you need would apply from your child’s birth until they reach adulthood which is around 18.
Insuring a Child’s Life – A Stand-Alone Policy for Children
Sanlam has come up with a stand-alone policy specifically for children and with affordable premiums. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cover the child’s first year of life. Sanlam’s child illness and injury policy, launched in 2014, provides a cash pay-out of up to R1 million.
Other insurers also offer similar packages and you would need to investigate the one that suits you best. These are:
• Altrisk
• BrightRock
• Discovery Life
• Liberty Life
• Momentum Myriad
• Old Mutual Greenlight
Cover for critical illnesses and injuries in children needs to be looked at in the context of other cover you’ve got such as funeral- or gap cover. Many people want to know why insurance which is aimed specifically at children does not feature more predominantly by life insurers. However, this might be opening a can of worms as in the United States, there have been a few cases of child murders by parents and where the motive was a policy pay out.
Insuring a Child’s Life – A Sick Child results in an Absent Parent
Yes, a child isn’t a breadwinner, but insurance for each member of the family can eliminate the financial hardships the parents face when a child has a severe illness and passes away.
A good medical aid insurance can protect the financial security of the entire family because the sickness and loss of a child can result in the loss of income for one or even both parents as they take time off to attend to the needs of their sick, dying child.
To get life insurance quotes for the whole family simply complete and send the form above
All info was correct at time of publishing