It is a good and safe practice to have a Health Insurance Plan for yourself, and your loved ones always. But how to decide upon the best plan out of so many available in the market these days, with varying features and benefits. Here are some important factors that you should consider before buying any Health Insurance Plan:
- It is really important to examine the Sum Insured in the Health Insurance Plan that you are planning to buy. Do check whether the Sum Insured amount is practically enough for any critical, or regular hospitalization requirements. Low premium might result into a lower Sum Insured amount, and lesser benefits covered in the Health plan. Sum Insured amount should be especially taken care of in case of Senior Citizen Health Plans or a Family Floater plan.
- You need to ensure what is your specific requirement for buying a Health Insurance Plan. There are different type of plans available these days for different purposes. I will write another article to explain different type of health plans available. To list few, Personal Accident Health Insurance, Diabetes Health Insurance, COVID Health Insurance, Family Floater Health Insurance, Critical Illness Health Insurance, and so are available by almost all Insurance companies these days.
- While buying the Health Insurance Plan, you should always consider and review available Top Up plans with the policy. These Top Up plans are amazingly helpful at the time we need them the most. There are several features of different Top Up plans, like Pre and Post hospitalization expense cover, Day Care expense cover, Ambulance cover, and the list is vast. Do check these Top Ups before making the final check out on your selected health plan.
- One of the important factor while buying a Health Insurance Plan is to carefully check the policy benefits versus the sum insured. One should always check for the sum insured by the policy, and the benefits the policy provides, like expense of Hospitalization, cover of Critical Illness and maternity, COVID cover, and more such benefits, while selecting the best health insurance plan as per their requirement.
- There is a clause of Waiting Period in most Health Insurance Plans, where you cannot make any claims on some, or all benefits covered by the Health Insurance Plan. This clause mostly relates to diseases like diabetes, heart related, or so. Please check for the Waiting Period clause of the plan, and select the minimum waiting period available.
- Always check for a plan with no, or bare minimum Room Rent limit. In the even of Hospitalization, rent of the hospital room is covered in the policy, but subject to the Room Rent limit allowed by the policy. Room Rent limit may be specified clearly in a policy, or may be certain percentage of the policy’s sum insured, but you should try to look for a policy with minimum or no rent limit.
- In some special cases, where the insured is prone to a risk, the insurance company may add Premium or Claim Loading on the policy. While Premium Loading increases the premium of the insured, Claim loading reduces the amount claimed. Do check the Policy details of the Health Insurance Plan for such loading clauses.
- While selecting the Health Insurance Plan as per your needs, don’t forget to check the list of hospitals in your vicinity that provide Cashless Hospitalization for your policy.
Conclusion
Buying a Health Insurance Plan in today’s world filled with uncertainties is very important, and a MUST. Thankfully, we have enough options available in the Insurance domain that will fit our requirements as well. But it is of utmost importance to check the plan and ensure that all the mentioned clauses in the plan suit your future requirement of Insurance.
Hope this short and precise article helps you figure out the best plan for yourself.
Before buying any type of Health Insurance Plan, I would recommend that you read about 8 TYPE OF HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS AVAILABLE IN INDIA to understand what factors you should check for before buying any type of Health Plan.
I will be writing more on different topics of Health and Life Insurance pretty soon.
Take good care of yourself till then.
Ciao…
Prashant P. Chauhan
Author @ The Winning LeapMeet Prashant Pratap Chauhan, the savvy founder behind The Winning Leap, a hub for sharp financial insights and expert analysis in the realm of finance blogging.