To be financially stable is everyone’s dream. However, with rising medical costs, treatment for illnesses can easily eat into your savings. Arranging funds during a medical emergency can also be a daunting task. A health insurance policy can protect you from the financial strain caused due to a medical emergency.
WHY IS HEALTH INSURANCE IMPORTANT?
- Savings: As The best part about health insurance is it helps to keep your savings intact in case there is a medical emergency. The insurer will take care of all the expenses such as hospitalization, drugs/medicines, etc. A health insurance plan is a trusted way to ensure a healthy and financially stable future.
- Security of Family’s health: Protecting the health of self and your family members or parents is necessary. You can protect your family members by investing regularly in the family floater plan wherein you can also get health cover for your parents. This type of health insurance ensures that all types of medical treatments are covered.
- High Medical Costs: Due to the high healthcare services cost, you may not be able to afford treatment. But when you have a health insurance cover, you can avail quality treatment at the best network hospitals. Network hospitals are those wherein insurers have a tie-up with hospitals that helps you get cashless treatment. With this facility, the insurance company directly settles the bills with the hospital.
- Lifestyle changes: Our fast-paced lives have influenced our lifestyle choices. Work stress, indulgence in junk food, smoking, environmental changes, etc., affect our overall health, and this could lead to life-threatening diseases such as cancer, liver problem, kidney failure and so on. In such situations, health insurance will cover the medical and surgical expenses incurred during an illness. It is an established way to provide for health-related or medical emergencies.
TYPES OF HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS IN INDIA:
Health insurance encompasses two types - Indemnity plans and Definite
Benefit Plan. The indemnity plans are traditional health covers which
cover hospitalization costs from the sum assured. Definite benefit plans
offer lump sum payment on detection of illness.
Indemnity plans further
include:
- Individual
- Family floater
- Senior Citizen
- Mediclaim
- Unit linked health plans
Definite benefit plans include the following:
- Critical illness Plan
- Personal Accident Plan
- Hospitilization cash benefit plan
HOW DOES HEALTH INSURANCE WORK?
The health insurance policy covers the whole or a part of the hospital expenses. People often have questions regarding how insurance works. Take a look at the below pointers:
-
Choose the right cover
When you plan to buy a health insurance policy, make sure that assess your needs. If you have dependent family members including your spouse and children, you may opt for family floater insurance or if you have dependent parents aged above 60 years, then a Senior Citizen plan would an ideal choice. The needs vary from person to person, hence select the insurance type wisely.
-
Sum Assured
When an insurance company extends insurance coverage in the form of a sum assured, which a policyholder gets in exchange for the premium you pay. Choose the best health insurance cover, which offers sufficient coverage at affordable premium rates.
-
Daily allowance
Some insurance cover offers daily allowance, wherein you get daily hospital cash to cover daily expenses for the number of days one is hospitalized.
-
Claim process
You can claim for health cover in two ways – cashless and reimbursement. The cashless process requires you to seek medicare only at network hospitals of the insurance company. Whether the hospitalization is planned or unplanned, the insurer directly settles expenses with the network hospital. However, in some cases where the cashless facility is not available, you can still claim for health coverage through the reimbursement process. Under this, you have to pay all the hospital bills, and later you need to submit the bills to the insurance to get the reimbursement transferred in your account directly.
-
Renewal & Policy lapse
The term period of health insurance depends on what type of plan you select. Usually, policies are active for a year. If you forget to renew, the policy will lapse. In case of a lapsed policy, the insurer gives you a time period of 6 months during which you need to pay the outstanding premiums and reinstatement costs.
-
No Claim Bonus
In case you do not claim in a particular year, you are entitled to receive no claim bonus. This can be either in the form of a premium discount or addition to the sum assured amount.
