Health Insurance: 9 Best Tips To Choose the Right Plan?
Selecting the right health insurance plan can be overwhelming, especially with the variety of options available today. The right policy not only offers financial protection during medical emergencies but also ensures access to quality healthcare when needed.
From understanding coverage types and premium costs to evaluating network hospitals and claim processes, making an informed choice is crucial. This guide will help you navigate the key factors to consider while choosing a health insurance plan that fits your needs and budget.
What are the best tips to choose the right plan?
Before you choose the right health insurance plan, try calculating your BMI with a BMI calculator. Let us explore some smart tips to select the right health insurance policy for you and your family:
1. Picking a Plan Depending Upon Your Health Requirements
You must choose a health insurance plan that will secure you and your family against a wide range of medical problems. Selecting the right insurance plan as per the requirements of your health can provide you with benefits like pre- and post-hospitalisation, transportation, and daycare expenses.
It will also cover illnesses that you may be at risk of due to the medical history of your family. If you want to buy a family floater plan, consider the requirements and benefits of the plans.
2. Choose an Appropriate Amount of Sum Insured
When purchasing health insurance, select the right sum insured based on your desired requirements. A higher amount of insured sum will increase your premium, while a lower sum insured will be insufficient to provide coverage for all your essential medical expenses.
It is better to use a health insurance premium calculator to understand the basics of how much a policyholder should pay as a premium upon choosing his/her desired plan.
This will eventually exhaust your savings and increase out-of-pocket expenses. Additionally, you must consider the ages of your family members, your residence city, and future medical inflation when selecting the right coverage amount.
3. Pick up any plan that is closer to your desired coverage
Firstly, analyse the health requirements of your family and then select a plan that will offer the right coverage. It will be ideal if you opt for a comprehensive health insurance policy that will cover the extensive expenses of hospitalisation.
Apart from this, it includes OPD treatments, teleconsultations, homecare treatments, non-medical treatments, and modern treatments. Moreover, specific plans with coverages like maternity insurance benefits can be beneficial for newly married couples.
4. Prefer Plans with No Sub-limits/Co-Payments
When selecting a health insurance plan, look for plans without sub-limits or clauses for co-payment. This is because sub-limits restrict the maximum amount you can claim regarding a treatment or procedure.
On the other hand, co-payment indicates the share of the claim amount that must be paid during claim settlement. Both sub-limits and co-payments increase additional expenses; thus, you must avoid buying plans with these clauses.
5. Select Plans with a Lower Pre-Existing Disease Waiting Period
If you are choosing a health insurance plan for senior citizens or parents, prefer plans with a reduced pre-existing disease (PED) waiting period. It is a specific period after which you can raise your claim amount for the treatment costs.
Most of the plans offer PED waiting periods of 1 to 3 years, while some plans offer PED coverage from the first day in cases like diabetes or hypertension. Since most of the elderly people have age-related issues, a minimal PED waiting period will shorten their wait time for filing claims.
6. Prefer Plans with Annual Health Checkups and Restoration Benefits
Before choosing the ideal health insurance policy, you must make sure to consider plans with an annual checkup or restoration benefit. Although super top-up health insurance plans in India do not provide this benefit, standard health insurance offers this coverage.
The benefits of restoration help you recharge your insured sum before renewal if the original amount is either completely or partially exhausted. On the other hand, the annual health check-up benefits you with your annual preventive medical tests. These benefits are crucial to enhance the coverage quality of your selected plan.
7. Check the Exclusion Lists of Policies
Every health insurance plan has certain exclusions. It is essential to check exclusions in a plan to have a proper understanding of what is not covered under that particular plan. Mediclaim policies are the best option for the treatment coverage of any particular disease and additional medical expenses.
Usually, these policies do not put any diseases on the exclusion lists, making them a better choice for managing medical expenses during an emergency. However, mediclaim policies have certain terms and conditions, which you must check properly.
8. Opt for Plans with Desired Riders and Add-ons
Add-ons or riders enhance the coverage of a standard plan by charging an additional premium amount. Certain add-on covers, such as personal accident cover, critical illness cover and inflation shield, are available in many plans.
Additionally, there are certain riders, such as the global cover rider and the hospital cash rider, that can extend your policy coverage. Thus, always prefer health insurance plans with proper add-ons and riders for yourself and your family.
9. Go for an Insurer with a High Claim Settlement Ratio
Before buying a health insurance or a mediclaim policy, always prefer those companies that offer a higher claim settlement ratio (CSR). It is the ratio of the total settled claims against the total received claims in a year.
Higher levels of CSR indicate that the company receives most of the settled claims. Therefore, if you buy from a company that has higher CSR, you have a higher chance that you will get your claim settled.
Read More: What Does a Family Health Plan Cover? A Guide for Beginners
Final Words
Buying health insurance is quite a challenging task, which requires thorough research about the coverage types and conditions. In the recent scenario, health insurance is crucial to cover medical expenses during any emergency. Other than that, treatment costs are skyrocketing every day, making health insurance a necessity.
Pranab Bhandari is an Editor of the Financial Blog “Financebuzz”. Apart from writing informative financial articles for his blog, he is a regular contributor to many national and international publications namely Tweak Your Biz, Growth Rocks ETC.
