Surgical Care Rider

A surgical care rider³ is an additional cover that can be purchased along with a life insurance policy. This pays a lump sum to the insured to cover the cost of medically necessary surgery.

People save money for their future goals like funding a child's education. But nobody saves money for a surgery, because it is unwanted and unexpected. A life insurance policy doesn’t cover all the risks that one may possess. Changing lifestyles and rising critical illness counts are resulting in more surgeries every day. But does a vanilla life insurance policy cover the expense of a surgery? The answer is no! A life insured needs to have a rider named “surgical care rider” in force to cover the required medical surgery.

The surgical care rider enhances the coverage of the base policy by a nominal cost. It assures to pay a lump sum to fulfil the hospital expenses in case the life insured has to undergo surgery. Generally, policyholders add this rider to their term insurance policies because the cost of modern surgeries can result in a big dent in anyone’s finances. 

The life insured can file to receive the compensation under this rider if they are hospitalised for a minimum period of 24 hours. The premium required to keep this rider active remains the same throughout the policy years irrespective of the policyholder’s surgical requirements. This rider is known to cover major organ surgeries like brain, lungs, heart, or liver.

Anant purchased a Rs.1 crore term plan. He also bought a surgical care rider for Rs.10,00,000/-. The benefit amount chosen under the surgical care rider cover was Rs.25,000/- per day. One unfortunate day, Anant was admitted to the hospital for his liver surgery. The insurance company paid him Rs.25,000 per day benefit amount as he had the additional surgical care rider cover. This came as a benefit under the policy because otherwise the term plan would have not paid for the surgical care.