A holistic health insurance plan helps mitigate financial risks arising from unexpected medical exigencies, growing healthcare costs and increasing instances of various lifestyle illnesses.
It takes care of a multitude of medical expenses over the course of one’s lifespan in a cost-effective manner. Of course, medical requirements are dynamic and differ from person to person depending on their stage of life, lifestyle choices and existing health conditions. These factors, among others, would determine the kind of coverage your health insurance plan should ideally offer.
Customising your health insurance plan has become a lot easier today. Such coverage offers more flexibility and choice when it comes to securing the long-term health and safety of loved ones.
Here are some of the common means of customising your health insurance plan to suit your personal medical needs.
Base plan with add-on riders
Nearly all regular health insurance policies come with several optional riders or add-ons that can be chosen as per the subjective requirements of the insured persons for a nominal extra premium amount.
Features like maternity benefit, daily hospital cash, critical illness cover, etc., are some of the common options available today. Depending on the specific present and future medical necessities, one can choose a set of riders to design a personalised plan.
Base plan with super top-up
Another alternative is to select a base plan and additionally invest in a super top-up policy for a higher combined sum insured at a relatively affordable total premium outflow.
The coverage under the super top-up plan begins when the deductible amount or threshold limit is crossed, which should preferably be equal to the base policy’s sum insured amount (to avoid out-of-pocket expense). Also, one can maintain a base plan from one insurance company while having a super top-up policy from another insurer.
Combination of base plans
This option is particularly meaningful for families that have members of different age groups. The family’s health insurance scheme can be customised such that the needs of the younger members (say, the husband, wife and children) are met with a family floater plan or individual base health insurance policies, while the elderly people (parents, in-laws, etc.) have their requirements catered to by senior citizen plans or critical illness insurance.
Higher sum insured
Insurance companies in India allow policyholders to boost the sum insured amount whenever required, subject to their guidelines being met. The advantage here is that younger working people can choose a comparatively lower coverage amount and augment it as they grow older, at which point the propensity of requiring medical attention owing to chronic ailments may rise.
The main purpose of maintaining health insurance is to avoid expensive out-of-pocket medical expenses whenever such an event occurs. Hence, it is important to ensure that the coverage amount is sufficient, instead of trying to save small sums against annual premium outflow by settling for a suboptimal sum insured.
Porting your plan
There could be a situation where policyholders with an ongoing health insurance plan may be dissatisfied with the coverage and features offered by the current insurer.
In such cases, one can certainly consider porting their policy to another insurance company that may offer better benefits for similar premium payments.
The application process and underwriting guidelines would depend on the new insurer. Nevertheless, this is an option that policyholders may choose for better customisation.
EMI options
Nowadays, one can opt for monthly, quarterly or biannual instalment facility towards health insurance premium payments. The overall premium calculation may be slightly higher compared with the upfront annual premium payable; however it would mean a lower one-time financial load on the policyholder.
Given the complexity of health insurance, one should carefully appraise the above-mentioned nuances in existing health insurance plans before deciding on the best-fit plan for oneself and one’s family.
Periodic reviews of lifecycle stages and expected medical needs are advised in order to make the right choice and be prepared well in time for any unexpected or planned hospitalisation event.
