Should I take Health Insurance - 2?

                                        

We had seen the need for health insurance in our last article; in this article we will see the benefits of getting this insurance and how careful we should while choosing this one. The main and important benefit is to get your savings to be protected from this medical emergency. We all work hard to earn and the hard earned money is for near and dear ones. If any medical emergency occurs all attention will be to save ourselves and the dear ones rather than keeping the money in our bank account. This can occur to anybody at any time and the best way is to keep ourselves guarded with Health Insurance.

In most of the offices they provide group insurance policy, but it is advisable to have a personalized health insurance policy to have continuity and to get a comprehensive coverage. Group policy may not cover all the diseases and there may be a co-payment clause in which you will be forced to share the fees with the hospital. Another important point to note is due to globalization or due to urge to earn more, many of us are shifting companies often and this may result in discontinuity of health insurance policy because during treatment if it is classified as pre existing disease new company may not entertain to reimburse or provide cashless facility.

Benefits of health insurance

• Most of the insurance companies offer 24 hour day care treatment also which will be of great help.
• Ambulance cover is provided nowadays
• Second opinion can be sought if we have doubt with the first medical checkup as it may help in unwanted spending.
• Pre natal and post natal hospitalization cover is provided.
• Room rent, doctor fees, surgery fees, medical bills etc will be covered with this single policy.
• In some of the companies free medical checkup is allowed once in a year as add on benefit.
• A two year policy will have a reduced premium and protect you from increase in price of premium due to inflation.

Even day care treatments are accepted in many of the policies based on doctor’s advice as many of the laser surgery are getting completed within hours and people are asked to leave hospital immediately.

Health insurance offered by

Health insurance is part of Life Insurance. In most of the corporate companies, this is being offered as group policy, where there will be a cap limit to any of the ailments or else there will be copayment rule. In copayment person has to share part of his medical payments by himself and the rest will be borne by the insurance company. In India health insurance is being offered by Religare, Apollo munich, ICICI prudential, Max Bupa etc.

Exclusions and things to check:

The most important thing to check is the waiting period, during which policy will not be covered for specific disease. Any serious pre existing disease has to be told to the insurance companies in advance to get it checked for policy coverage, because once found later the paid premium will be of no use. Diagnostic charges, alternative therapies, abortion, additional supplements, specific ailments, resulting from war are not covered in this policy. Claim ratio of the company needs to be analyzed as this says how soon they are responding to the claims.

How much to Take?

A policy of few lakhs of no use, it is advisable to take a policy of no less than 10lakhs as any heart related ailments can make you spend a minimum of lakhs in any hospital. If you want to get treatment from a reputed hospital the bed charges, doctor fees, surgery charges, lab tests and pills will run in to some extra amount which cannot be reduced, so it is really needed to get a cover of minimum of 10 lakhs initially and slowly the cover can be increased.

A Health insurance policy can be taken in online easily and for a 25 – 35 year old the premium will be not more than 10000.