Who Invented Critical Illness Insurance? 
The brother to the physician who performed the first human to human heart transplant , Dr. Christian Barnard , is the person who invented critical illness insurance . Like his brother , Dr. Marius Barnard was also a cardiac surgeon in Cape Town , South Africa . He saw that he could heal people 's bodies but he could not heal the financial toll that their illness and treatment took on the lives of them and their families . Dr. Marius Barnard created Critical Illness Insurance to offset that . the first policy was issued in South African in 1983 . 