Health is a cause of concern for everyone, especially when increasing stress and an unhealthy lifestyle along with environmental changes has led to the increase in the incidence of a number of lifestyle diseases, some of which can be life threatening as well. At a personal level, people take up medical insurance policies to deal with medical emergencies. Nowadays, even employers are concerned about the health of their employees, because it has a direct bearing on the efficiency and productivity of the concern. Hence, it has become a kind of a corporate culture to insure employees under the critical illness insurance policy.

In the UK, critical illness policy has gradually gained popularity as a reliable insurance cover. In fact, it has supplemented the life insurance cover on a number of occasions. The Human Resource Department that takes the insurance cover on behalf of the employees has to take care regarding what diseases are being covered under the policy, because the insurance policy provides cover for only a restricted number of diseases. In fact, some policies even have a list of the diseases that it considers critical, and the insured has to pick and choose from the list.

The critical illness policy provides the much-needed monetary support to a person in case he contracts a dreaded disease whose treatment is prolonged and expensive. In some cases, even problems that restrict a person's movement and render him incapable of attending office are also covered, like paralysis and coma. In such a scenario, the affected party gets a lump sum.

It depends on the person as to how he uses the money. If some balance is left from the amount that he receives from the insurance company, he is free to put it to personal use. The critical illness policy provides a person a chance to a healthy life by giving him the financial resources to deal with the treatment and subsequent rehabilitation.