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Buying health insurance plans requires adequate research and planning to ensure that you gain the best coverage at the most affordable cost. There are many essential things that have to be considered by you before investing in one such plan. For example, the health plan selected by you should take care of your pre-existing diseases, have flexible payment and add-on options, provide the right kind of coverage for all future health-related requirements and needs, deliver easy ways of claim settlement, align with your premium budget constraints, and so forth.
Here we intend to underline the common benefits of health insurance plans and also throw light on the risks of avoiding their purchase.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Buying Health Insurance
Comprehensive health insurance plans provide several benefits through their well-conceived features. Having prior information of these benefits goes a long way in guiding your purchase of the right plan. Along with getting financial protection when you find yourself in any medical emergency, you can avail many other benefits – some of these are highlighted below.
1. No-claim Bonus (NCB)
No Claim Bonus is a term given to the percentage of discount provided by your insurance company for each year in which you have not staked any claim. NCB encourages all health insurance policyholders to avoid making petty claims. The benefit of doing this is receivable in the form of a discount on the premium payable while renewing your health policy. Another way of making gains through NCB is by asking your insurance provider to enhance the total sum assured amount. Given these advantages, it becomes crucial to check for the accumulated NCB at the time of renewing your health insurance plans.
2. Family/Loyalty Discounts
These discounts are available for enrolling a family member or introducing another person to the same or other health insurance plans on offer by your insurance company. These referral rewards are usually given in the form of 5% to 10% discounts on the premium amount payable by the new policyholder.
3. 24/7 Customer Support
It is natural to find some features, terms, conditions, and benefits of health insurance plans complicated. Fortunately, help is close at hand to make you understand the nuances of coverage, premium payment, add-on purchase, claim settlement processes, etc. The top health insurance plans in India are backed by 24/7 customer service support to enable this cause in the best of ways.
4. Sum Assured Restoration
If you have a family floater plan, then you may be worried about the entire sum assured amount getting exhausted in the event of one of your family members falling critically ill. In order to allow optimum usage of your sum assured, the best health insurance plans provide a unique feature known as the sum assured restoration benefit. With this restoration option, the sum assured is automatically reinstated within the same policy year once it is used up entirely, and at no additional cost. Therefore, even if one member of the family exhausts the sum insured of the floater plan, the other members will be covered with the restoration benefit and can raise a claim should another member fall ill within the same year. Restoration benefit cannot be availed by the same member for whom the cover was claimed the first time. Also, the sum assured is replenished only once within the same policy year after the base claim is made and it cannot be carried forward to the next year. Such plans are more expensive than their regular counterparts – so choose accordingly.
5. Cashless Facility
Health insurance plans help you get cashless treatment in networked hospitals and healthcare facilities. These cashless benefits are available as cover for pre and post hospitalization expenses, day care procedures, maternity and child benefits, annual health check-ups, ICU charges, nursing care, room rent, medicines and equipment for treatment purposes, ambulance facilities, etc. You need not pay the bills for availing the services agreed upon at the time of purchasing health insurance plans – they will be paid for directly by your health insurance company to the networked medical care facility.
Risks of Not Buying Health Insurance
It is commonplace to find Indians being oblivious to the risks of not buying health insurance plans. Even today, as per IRDA, only 0.16 percent of the nation’s population is insured for health. Given this, over 70 per cent of health-related expenses are being met from the pocket of the patient or their family member.
This is an alarming situation in the face of medical treatment costs rising skywards with every passing day. By not buying health insurance in time, you could be at the risk of paying for hospitalization for even common diseases that may take a toll of INR 60,000-70,000 in private medical facilities. Obviously, the bills for more serious ailments and critical illnesses will be much higher and may bring you down by lacs of rupees!
Online Application and Renewal of Health Insurance Plans
Gone are the days when you had to come out of your comfort zone to understand the features and benefits of different health plans or to purchase/renew them. Now all this is possible online through secure, quick, and reliable online channels. Simply log in to Coverfox.com to compare and buy the best health insurance plans online.
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