How to smartly cover your entire family under health insurance
If you are planning to buy an appropriate health cover for your family, you may need to consider the below-mentioned factors while making a choice.
Factors to Consider While Selecting Your Family Health Cover-
The number of members: You might not be able to analyse the healthcare costs by looking at your family's size. But the number of members will surely help you. So, you need to consider all the members in your while selecting an appropriate health plan.
Age of all the family members: When a family consists of members belonging to different age groups, it is ideal to segregate the health requirements of each member before choosing any health plan. This exercise will help you to opt for the most suitable health cover.
Pre-existing conditions: Generally, most of the health insurers demand a 3 to 4 years waiting period for members who are having some pre-existing chronic conditions. Some of the companies offer coverage for pre-existing illnesses right from the first day when you buy a policy. So, while choosing an appropriate health insurance policy, you need to compare all the available plans and select the one that covers the individual health requirements of each member of your family.
Always compare benefits: Once you have decided to choose a health plan for your family, the next step is to compare the plans of different insurers. This step should be given due importance as it will help you to get the best health cover with unmatched benefits and features.
Sum insured: Another key difference between a family floater plan and multiple individual plans for the family is the sum insured. A family floater plan is relatively cheaper because the sum insured is lower, and it is shared by the entire family. For example, if three members are covered under a family floater plan for 3 lakh and one member uses up more than 1 lakh, then the remaining amount can be shared again by all the members of the family. But in case of multiple individual plans with a cover of 1 lakh each, individual members will not be eligible for benefits once the sum insured is used up.
Additional Points to Cover While Choosing Health Plan for Your Family-
- Some of the insurance policies set a limit on the daily rent payable, which sometimes ends up with the policyholder paying a portion of the rent out of his wallet. It is always the best idea to opt for such a policy that does not have any capping on room rent.
- With the latest improvements in medical technology, many of the treatments do not require patients to get hospitalized. Therefore, it is advisable to go for a policy that gives sufficient coverage for day care procedures as well.
- Most of the health insurers also offer the facility of a cashless claim, if the treatment is taken a network hospital of the insurance company. One must make sure that the network hospitals are within the reach while opting for the health plan.
- Some of the family floater plans also offer maternity benefits in their insurance policies. So, it is ideal to compare and understand the restrictions and benefits of maternity covers before choosing one.
- Most of the health insurance policies have exclusions on some or the other disease. One should have a clear idea of the types of diseases covered under the plan and the exclusions as well.
Family Floater Plans or Individual Plans: Which is better?
After you have identified the health-related needs of the individual members of your family, you may know that sometimes a family floater plan may not be the right fit. In such circumstances, you would need to select between either an individual plan or a family floater plan.
For example, Mr. Gupta wanted to buy a health cover for his spouse and his younger brother. Both were in the younger age bracket, so they chose to invest in a family floater plan. Mr. Shah, on the other hand, wished to cover his aging parents along with his spouse and children. Such an option was costly because of the greater risk involved due to his parents’ old age. He, therefore, decided to purchase individual policies for his parents and invested in a family floater plan for his spouse, dependent children, and himself.
The above example illustrates how assessing the needs of individual members can help in reducing surplus costs while planning your family health insurance coverage.
Bottom Line
Before buying any health cover, first, you need to understand the health requirements of your family. The factors mentioned here will help you choose the best health insurance plan for your loved ones.
