The pandemic has hit us hard. Healthcare costs have gone up with some even forced to give up their cover due to a steep rise in premiums. Here are a few tips to make the most of your Health Insurance cover.

The pandemic has hit us hard. Healthcare costs have gone up with some even forced to give up their cover due to a steep rise in premiums. However, you have to treat it as a necessity and make sure you’re covered, now more than ever. Understanding how Health Insurance works and making sure you have the best possible plan in your budget can save you a ton in treatment costs (this could very well be your entire life savings). Read more.

Today, Health Insurance is a necessity as the cost of treatment and medication is skyrocketing. Recent reports suggest that premiums will go up further to offset a large number of COVID-19-related claims. Now, more than before, people are more susceptible to lifestyle diseases.

If you don’t have a good insurance policy, now is a good time to get one. Keeping a good, feature-loaded Credit Card can help too, especially if there’s an emergency and you don’t have cash handy.

Here are a few tips to make sure you get the most out of your policy so that you’re always ahead of the game:

Age Matters

It is a great decision to buy personal health cover early in life as you can serve your waiting period when you are still in the best of health and utilise the policy when it’s needed. Do not wait until you feel vulnerable to illnesses. Also, the younger you are, the lower is your premium.

Being young also gives you an opportunity to compare Health Insurance plans across different providers before settling on one. The rejection of your proposal form is quite unlikely as you are healthy and young. But, as you delay, there are chances you will not be covered for certain illnesses and may be left with just a handful of options to choose from.

Additional Reading: How A Smoker Can Buy Health Insurance

Restoration Benefit

This basically restores or, in simple words, recharges your original sum insured if there is more than one hospitalisation in the same year. A wide range of health plans nowadays offer this very important benefit. It’s absolutely important that this be considered. There are terms and conditions related to this – best to check with the insurers that you’re considering to get a clear picture.

What’s important to note is that under family floater plans, in which the sum insured is shared by all the family members, the probability of the entire sum insured getting exhausted due to a serious illness or injury of a member is quite high. This will leave other family members vulnerable without Health Insurance cover. When this happens, this magical benefit proves to be of great help, not only to family floater policies but to individual Health Insurance policies as well.

Additional Reading: How Good Is A Standard Individual Benefit-Based Coronavirus Health Insurance Policy?

For Existing Policy Holders

Do you already have a plan in place? Wonderful! However, do not forget to keep increasing the cover on a regular basis so that it’s in line with the rising medical expenses. According to reports, treatment costs are seeing an increase of 12-14% every year. Your policy needs to keep up with this.

It may just so happen that at the time of buying your current health plan, your focus was more towards going for a lower premium. If that’s the case, chances are that your health plan has various deductibles.

Also, do remember that a good part of your overall treatment cost is often taken up by the room rent of the hospital. At a time like this, if you go for a different, more expensive room either due to unavailability of the eligible room or, perhaps, just due to personal preference, be prepared to shell out much more.

One last tip – paying your premiums with a Credit Card can give you a ton of rewards and cashback too. Click the link below to explore options with instant approval and contactless KYC – you may be pre-approved!

Hope this helps. Stay safe.