Health
- A health insurance helps you protect your growing or accumulated wealth for longevity rather than depleting it unintendedly to healthcare related expenditures.
- It’s imperative to set aside a portion of the wealth to provide for drawn downs towards generic out-patient healthcare expenses, attendant expenses on domiciliary care, medicines and supplies particularly post-retirement. But invasive medical treatments of chronic diseases can drain accumulated wealth particularly when income earning capacity reduces. An independent health insurance policy taken from a third-party medical insurance provider can extend beyond the wealth accumulation stage (earning years) and continue to somewhat shield you from rising medical expenditures during the wealth distribution phase (retired years) of life too.
- Here're a few broad guidelines to help you go about choosing a health insurance policy;
- Pick a health insurance policy sooner in life to reduce out of pocket expenses and increase the chances of extending your hospitalization cover for all ailments including pre-existing medical conditions, if any (you’ll exhaust waiting period for certain illnesses while you’re still hale & hearty and benefit from extensive coverage later on from seniority in the policy)
- Extend your health insurance cover beyond the group health insurance policy (if any) offered by your employer. This particularly helps during times of extended unforeseen medical expenditures and/or period of unemployment.
- Choose a comprehensive health insurance policy that covers against medical emergencies with possibility of lifetime renewability (whereby insurers must compulsorily renew policies except on grounds of fraud, moral hazard, or misrepresentation). It’ll cover pre and post hospitalisation expenses, ambulance services, day care procedures, organ donor expenses and in some cases maternity expenses too. It covers in-patient hospitalisation expenses incurred on treatment under Ayurveda, Unani, Sidha and Homeopathy systems of medicines. Pre-existing diseases are either covered with a waiting period or it’s shortened on payment of additional premium (loading charges).
- Go for a higher sum if there’s no employer-backed group insurance policy. In case of an existing group insurance policy, opt for a lower cover with an option to increase it overtime.
- Customize the policy based on your needs. Select family floater over individual policy to maximize flexibility & cost-efficiency, opt-in for preventive care through add-ons like diabetes, BP or any other critical illness cover in case of family history with respect to any of these ailments. Prioritize quality care to ensure maximum coverage of network hospitals for cashless treatment facilities etc. In case of frequent travel, go for a global coverage policy that’d offer emergency as well as planned medical treatment abroad alongside air ambulance and OPD facilities.
- Ensure complete transparency with health history while applying for the policy.
- Take note of policy exclusions and sub-limits (caps on individual expense categories, within the overall sum insured/coverage of the policy). In general, sub-limits are imposed on hospital room rent, doctor’s consultation fees, ICU charges, Operation theatre charges and so on. Sub-limits most often scale down an entire claim.
- An insurer’s liability is restricted through a co-pay clause. This simply refers to the agreement that you’d pay a small part of the admissible claim while the insurer will take care of the rest of the hospitalization expense. More common amongst policies for senior citizens, it’s important to know the percentage of claim sharing before you sign up.
- Top-up and Super top-ups on existing policies are additional health cover on existing policies. It provides cover over the threshold limit of the health insurance cover in multiple claims or multiple hospitalisations in the year. They lapse only when the entire cover is exhausted and not when you’ve used it once. Consider it if you need to enhance the coverage as you grow older.
- If you’re finding it challenging to personalize health insurance, reach out to us to help you pick out the most suitable policy that’ll be in line with your wealth accumulation phase of life.