Hi Readers, after my previous article about Term insurance policy, today I wanna give some basic inputs to choose the best Health Insurance for yourself / for your family members.
Health Insurance - first of all we should get aware that it is not same as life insurance. Most of us say that we had insurance but which type of it is? Life Insurance or Health Insurance or both.
Actually we should have both -- for life -- & -- for health.
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As we know in our previous article, Term Insurance is for our Life ~ Secure your dependents from unforeseen loss of bread earner of the family. It is just like replacement of income earner of family.
Read More about TERM INSURANCE
But Health insurance is for recovery of our expenses incurred on our hospitalization. Here I remind one quote here "one rupee save, one rupee earn" - isn't it?
Have you ever think of lock down all over the world due to some virus? In these last two years, we came across deadly virus (corona) in different variants / in different waves and it greets almost everyone of us. And in this time, hospital expenses were sky rocketed. Even we have our employer / government's health scheme, it did not cover much of our hospital expenses. That too, in most of the cases, this expense got reimbursed which means, you need to get your cash first.
After this corona, now inflation is showing it's bad characteristics in almost all countries. So to deal with these unforeseen pandemics and rate hikes in our medical expenses due to inflation, the best option we have "Health Insurance".
One more benefit from this Health Insurance, this is not only look after our hospitalization expenses but also it helps the expenses incurred on our life style diseases. Right?
Try to insure at an early age to get the premium at lower price through out life time. (off course, renewal should be in time every year to continue the initial premium)
I think this is more than enough of convincing to avail your "Health Insurance". :)
Let's know what we have to verify before availing "Health Insurance".
- Network of hospitals
- Cash less Treatment
- Pre and Post Hospitalization cover
- More than Hospitalization (Maternity etc.,)
- Restoration of Sum Insured
- Life time renewal option
- No claim bonus
- Free Medical Checkups, if any
- Co-Pay Clauses, if any
- Max Insurance cap, if any
- Waiting Period, if any
- Claim settlement Ratio
Network of Hospitals: Check the number of hospitals in your city, the insurance company tied up. because Higher the number is the better to choose such company's insurance policy.
We can't choose the hospital to admit in emergency. So more tied up hospitals is better to have such company's HI.
Cash-less Treatment: Best feature available in this category. It helps a lot, when we burden with unforeseen medical expenses. We don't need to pay a single rupee, if our company tied up with hospital and offering cash-less facility. Check this "How many cashless hospitals are there in your locality" before avail HI.
Pre and Post Hospitalization Cover: Any medical costs incurred before the patient is hospitalized due to certain diseases. For instance, CT Scan, MRI, X-Ray like expenses cover under pre hospitalization.
Post hospitalization will take care of expenses incurred after the patient is discharged from hospital. like any therapy expenses, follow up treatments, medication, physician expenses etc.. Most of the companies are offering Pre and Post hospitalization cover period as 45 to 90 days. Longer the period is the better. but mind the premium...
More than Hospitalization: As we discuss before, Health insurance covers our hospitalization expenses but more than hospitalization means cover for maternity expenses or some chronic diseases. So, check before you avail it. because all policies do not cover maternity facility.
Restoration of Sum Insured: It is a 'MUST' like feature on any health insurance policy. because if your sum Insurance amount was exhausted during the policy period, it will be restored / reinstated the total sum insured.
Otherwise, we need to do top up on our existing policy separately. Not only this, may be sum insured exhausted when we were in hospital itself, what can we do?
Life Time Renewal: As mentioned above, we need to get health insurance cover at the earliest age possible. The same premium amount continue for your life time.
No claim Bonus: It is like reward given by insurance companies to policy holders, who have not made a claim during the policy period. Reward like increase (10% to 50% hike) in coverage amount for the same premium amount or discount in premium amount for the same coverage amount.
Free Medical Checkups: It is like free add-on. Expenses incurred towards Cost of Health check-up up to the limits mentioned in your policy at network hospitals on completion of each policy year or for two years (irrespective of claim).
Co-Pay Clauses, if any: It is not better to go for co-pay clause insurance policy. Because we have to pay some amount on every bill we incurred.
Max-Insurance Cap, if any: Not advisable to avail the health insurance policy which has maximum sum insurance cap.
Waiting Period, if any: For almost all policies, waiting period will be there for some specific diseases / chronic diseases / pre-existing diseases. It is like 2 to 4 years.
If you are new insurer, check for initial waiting period. Initial waiting period is 15 to 30 days from the date of avail.
Claim settlement Ratio: This is the best metric used to choose the insurance company. Higher the best.
Claim settlement ratio is the percentage of claims that an insurance company settles in a year out of the total claims.
For instance, CSR of an insurance company is 99% means, this company is honoring 99 claims out of 100 claim request from it's policy holders.
Like this, there are other ratios like solvency ratio, combined ratio to consider but these will be taken care of by insurance regulatory IRDAI.
Best way to avail Health insurance policy: what are the things we need to verify before availing a policy but where can we get all these details?
Either at company's website or aggregator website. If you ask me, I choose aggregator website like policybazar, insurancedekho, policyX, comparepolicy etc.,
This is all from me today. Have a healthy day.
Hello, welcome to my blog, Smart Investor. I'm Satyanarayana, a banker & blogger, Investor from Visakha -patnam, India. You can read more about SML here.
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