Life and General Insurance

Health insurance policies insure you against unexpected medical emergencies and keep your family’s finances stable during such a testing time. Keeping in mind the rising medical costs and spurt of diseases buying a health insurance is mandatory. A medical emergency can knock anyone’s door and impact a person both emotionally and financially. As a result, financial advisors suggest that it is prudent to buy health insurance plan and health care policy early in life. 

 

Top Reasons to Buy Health Insurance Plans

Let’ summarize the top reasons to convince you to buy a good mediclaim health care policy.

 

1. Corporate Health Cover is Insufficient

 

With rising medical costs, the importance of health insurance policy cannot be overstated. Check the cost of a two day’s hospitalization for a regular ailment and then compare it with your company’s insurance coverage. When you will retire or change a job, your corporate health plan will cease to exist. So it is worthwhile to buy an individual health plan.

 

2. Increase in Incidence of Life Threatening Diseases

 

India is grappling with life threatening diseases. The effect of these diseases is felt on the productive workforce from 35-65 years. Also, heart diseases among Indians occur five to ten years earlier than in any other population around the world. News about people dying in Swine flu across the country has created a panic in almost every part of India. Unfortunately, the number of people who are affected with Swine flu is more than 10,000 and the death toll has now reached to 2000. Over the last few years, the emergence of infectious diseases has increased and chances are high that these diseases may become more deadly in near future. By the year 2020, seven out of every ten deaths in developing regions are expected to be due to non-communication diseases (NCDs).

 

In the light of escalating medical costs, coupled with bourgeoning demand for healthcare services and lack of easy access of top medical facility to low income group, health insurance is emerging as an alternative mechanism to fight deadly diseases. Furthermore, most of the health plans offer annual health checkups to bolster health awareness.

 

3. Better Financial and Heath Care Planning

 

Accidents and medical emergency can happen without warning and a good health policy will ensure that you are sufficiently covered for emergencies. It is tough to compute how much you will spend on health care in a year but having health insurance plan helps you to pay for sudden medical costs. You can also buy family plans that will cover the entire family. Usually, these family plans are much cheaper than having multiple individual health plan. Also, you can opt for critical illness plan along with personal accident cover to address your divergent health care needs.

 

4. Tax Benefits

 

You can get exemption for paying the premium under Section 80D of the Insurance Act.  This year, India’s Finance Minister Mr. ArunJaitley has increased the limit of deduction in health insurance premium to Rs 25,000 from Rs 15,000. For senior citizens, the new limit is Rs 30,000.

 

5. Value For Money

 

Besides taking care of the cost of hospitalization, health insurance companies also offer daily hospital cash allowance for expenses incurred on food, commuting from home to hospital and all other daily hospital charges. There are some insurance companies which take care of the policyholder’s recovery expenses also. Many health insurance companies have expanded their coverage ambit to include domiciliary treatment. However, these customized and high-end benefits come with higher premium so make sure to read the policy documents carefully before buying.

 

Compare and Buy the Best Health Insurance Plan

 

There is no debating on the importance of having a medical insurance in a country like India that ranks very low on human life index. Every person must buy a good health plan that covers medical costs, hospitalization costs, treatment and laboratory test costs and even critical illness. As is rightly said, “Health is wealth”, one must be prepared to manage such a situation in life.

 

Types of Health Policies in India

 

There are various plans readily available in India to cover every aspect of a medical emergency. Some popular types of policies are explained below:

 

Individual Health Plan - This is designed to cover an individual against various illnesses with cashless hospitalization and other add-on features. 

 

Family Floater Mediclaim – With this you can cover all your family members against diseases under a single cover. This cover offers a fixed sum insured for the family members that can be availed either by an individual member or as a sum total for treatment of one person. 

 

Surgery & Critical Illness Policy – This  is usually brought as a standalone policy or a rider in case of treatment against serious illnesses like- cancer, kidney failure, heart attack, paralysis etc. As the treatment of such diseases is expensive so the premium is also on a higher side. 

 

Pre-Existing Disease Cover - After a waiting period of 2-4 years, various policies offer a cover against the pre-existing diseases -e.g. - diabetes, hypertension, kidney failure, cancer etc. Pre-existing disease cover includes the diseases or illness that the policyholder had before buying the policy. 

 

 

Senior Citizen Health Plan - This offers to protect you from health issues during your old age. According to IRDA norms, every insurer must provide cover for people up to the age of 65 years. 

 

Preventive Healthcare - Undoubtedly health care is expensive and who wants to fall sick; anyways. So, now we have preventive health care that offers to take care of you and not let your fall sick. This includes preventive care treatments like regular checkups, consultation charges and other tests or x-ray fees concessions. The idea is to monitor your health at timely intervals and provide overall health care benefits. 

 

 

Key Features of Health Insurance Policy

 

A comprehensive health plan comes packed with features. Let us understand these features in detail so that buying a healthy policy becomes easy.

 

Cashless treatment – Every insurance provider will have a list of hospital under its network and if you get admitted in these hospitals then you don’t need to pay anything. Just tell your policy number and rest everything will be taken care by the hospital and the insurance provider. This type of plan is the most preferred on because there is no stress of claim reimbursement and arranging the documentation. 

 

Pre and Post Hospitalization – This feature takes care of both pre and post hospitalization charges for a period of 30 to 60 days depending on the plan purchased. 

 

Ambulance charges - The policy holder is free from burden of transportation or ambulance charges as it is paid by the insurer. This is a add-on benefit and you should have opted for it while purchasing. 

 

No Claim Bonus - NCB or No Claim Bonus is a benefit provided if the insured does not claim for any treatment in the previous year. Benefit could be in any form, either an increment in the sum assured or a discount in premium. You can avail this benefit on renewal. 

 

Medical Check- Up - Free check up is provided by few insurers provided you have a good history of no claim bonus. 

 

Tax Benefits – According to India’s tax system if you are paying a premium amount then you are liable to get tax rebate under section 80D of Income Tax Act for a maximum value of Rs.25000 for Indians in the age group of 18 to 50 years and Rs.30000 for senior citizens. 

 

Co-Payment - According to this feature you can lower the premium amount. Medical insurance offers co-payment option wherein there is a pre-defined amount of voluntary deductibles mentioned in the policy to be paid by the insured. So in case of a treatment, some amount is paid by the insured and rest by the insurer. 

 

How to Find the Best Medical Insurance Plan?

 

There are few factors that you should consider closely to make the right decision and choose the best.

 

Caps and sub-limits - Imposition of sub limits, co-payments or other caps might reduce the premium you pay for the insurance policy but in the long run it would alter the benefits. You should understand and assess this factor vis-à-vis your requirement and paying capacity to get maximum benefit out of a health insurance plan. 

 

Claim settlement record - This is an important criterion to assess the credentials of a  insurance provider. You should always go with a company with has good claim settlement record. Thus you can ensure that your claims and reimbursements would not be wrongly withheld. Always ask for the company’s claim settlement ratio before purchasing their health plan and save yourself from unnecessary harassment.

 

Scope of coverage - Just don’t buy a plan by comparing premium. Less amount of premium does not necessarily mean a good plan. On the contrary such a plan might not cover your needs properly. Closely look at what the plan covers. Buy a comprehensive plan. 

 

Renewability - It is important to see how many years the plan proposes to cover you. You should not be left without a proper cover when you need the most, say during your old age. 

 

Cashless Hospital Network - Check if the hospitals around you are covered as a network hospital by the company you are considering to buy from. Cashless hospitalization is hassle free and seamless. You and your family won’t be required to run around collecting documents and filling reimbursements. 

 

Premium Loading - We would strongly recommend you to check the terms and conditions pertaining to premium loading. This will save you from paying a high incremental premium post making a claim. This aspect though ignored in the beginning usually becomes a bone of discontentment at a later stage. The best practice would be to verify the premium fluctuation data of the plan for previous 5 years the least. 

 

Internal Team - Check for the plans from insurers who have a dedicated internal team for handling mediclaim. This comes in handy while expediting the claim settlement process. 

 

Floater (family) Size - Everyone has a different family size so you should always look for the family floater size allowed under the plan before buying it.