Your healthcare requirements are not always the same. They change due to many reasons like age, changing lifestyle, responsibilities, medical inflation and many more. Hence, you need to re-visit your health insurance cover time to time to make sure that your coverage is adequate to cover you and your family needs. Many people don't care to do it. With changing time, their health insurance often becomes inadequate and is never sufficient to cover them suitably even if they are spending a fortune over it. For getting a clearer view, let us understand the same thing with the help of an example. It will demonstrate why having adequate health insurance is essential.
Suppose you took a health insurance policy of Rs 5 lakhs when you were 25. After ten years your life would have changed, you will have more responsibilities, more ailments. You will realise that continuing with the cover of an older plan is not a wise decision. Being old you will be prone to many illnesses, the medical expenses and costs would have increase manifolds. So increasing health insurance cover becomes increasingly necessary with the increasing duration. Let's take a look at some of the smartest ways to expand the cover of health insurance.
Opt for higher cover
Increase your cover size from time to time adequately keeping in mind the medical inflation and your current situation. You need to have a critical illness cover with increasing age to cover the treatment costs as it requires frequent hospitalisation. You can increase your cover by buying a new policy, increasing the cover for the same or by getting a top-up for the policy you already have. However, it is to note that you will only get the benefit of the additional cover after the waiting period has passed. While you are legible to claim the previous insured amount for new coverage, you have to face the adequate waiting period.
Opt for add-ons
Add-ons are the additional features to your health insurance policy that you can invest in regularly. There are different add-ons offered by health insurance firms and you can get one for an additional premium amount over the basic policy. Some of the popular add-ons in the market are related to maternity benefits, critical illness, hospital cash benefit etc. With increasing age, you must access your needs and get suitable add-ons at right time.
Top-up plan
If you feel that your existing policy is not sufficient to meet your health care requirement, get a top-up plan over it. A top-up plan will give you coverage over the deductible limit as mentioned in the health insurance document.
Opt for Super top-up
It is top up where if your cumulative hospital bills during policy year exceed the deductible amount mentioned under the top-up policy, then the excess amount over the deductible sum is paid by the super top-up policy.
With the COIVD-19 pandemic, we all must have realised the importance of having health insurance. Insurance will give us financial stability in case of emergency and we can live peacefully without draining our savings.