Trauma Cover: What Does it Actually Cover?
[social_share]Trauma cover is designed to help you cover your medical and other costs while you recover from a serious illness or injury. That doesn’t mean it covers every potential injury or illness you might suffer from though. So what exactly does trauma cover protect you against?
Unfortunately there’s no single master list of injuries and illnesses trauma cover is guaranteed to cover you for. It varies from one insurance company to another. However, let’s look at ING’s OneCare Trauma cover as an example to see some of the disorders that might result in a payout to help you through your recovery.
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Examples of Conditions Covered
Here are just a few of the conditions covered specifically by the ING OneCare Trauma cover programme:
- Cancer
- Heart Attack
- Kidney Failure
- Lung Disease
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Muscular Dystrophy
- Severe Burns
- Stroke
As you can see, the disorders covered are severe — you’re not likely to collect an insurance payment for something minor like a broken leg (although you might if you actually lost the limb).
Restrictions and Terms
There’s more to receiving a payout from your trauma cover policy than simply finding out that you’re ill. Using the ING policy mentioned above as an example again, some conditions are only covered if you’ve had the policy in effect for 90 days when diagnosed (such as needing open heart surgery). Other disorders will have to be diagnosed and certified by a specialist medical practitioner who has been approved by the insurance company (such as any terminal illness).
Some insurance companies (like ING) even offer different tiered trauma cover packages, where some disorders will be covered under a more advanced programme but not their basic trauma cover package. For example, they only cover melanoma under their Trauma Premier policies. It’s important to review exactly what each insurance company and each package will actually cover, and know going in if you have elevated risks for any conditions you want to make sure are covered.
You’ll likely have some flexibility in how you want to receive your trauma cover payments — as a lump sum payment or instalment payments. The benefit of a lump sum payment is that you can take care of any large medical expenses up front. Then again instalment payments essentially keep a regular “income” coming in as usual to help you budget. No matter what you choose, if you’re suffering from a covered condition and you need help during your recovery, your trauma cover policy could quite literally become your lifeline.
