Buying a health insurance is no child’s play. While some find it complicated to understand, others are too casual about opting a policy. In both the cases, it could land you up in a crisis in case you happen to be in a situation when you thought you are all covered, but when the time would come to pay the expenses, you’ll be burdened with it all alone.
This happens to a lot of people, simply because they do not read the fine print of the document carefully. Despite the disclaimer that we read and hear often, terms and conditions go unattended. Like this, there are several other things that you must know while buying health insurance and couple of them are listed below for you:
• Policy Cover
As goes the disclaimer, read the offer document carefully. Glance through the policy and all its points thoroughly and evaluate your requirements, age group of family members, the policy amount, procedures, hospitals, age group, etc. Be very sure of all the conditions applied and how they would impact you in real life medical emergency.
• Age Limit
Go through the policy to know what is the entry age and the maximum age considered by health insurance companies.
• Sum Insured
Sum insured would be higher for urban cities than their rural counterparts for the simple reason of the cost of hospitalization and medical expenses being higher and more advanced. Sum insured is important as it is the value you agree to pay for covering your family and yourself.
• Cashless Claims & Network Hospitals
Cashless facility is now common with most of the health insurance companies, but each have their network hospitals at which it is accepted and holds valid. So in time of medical urgency and sudden hospitalization, you have not to bother to make payments, insurance company will rather deal for the same.
• Pre-existing Diseases
A disease that is pre-existent in the insured, then the companies does not accept the claim of the same immediately. There’s always a certain period after which it gets covered, hence you must compare and check for which health insurance policy can offer you least number of years of waiting period for the same.
• Critical Illness
A general health insurance would not cover for critical illness, so never get confused for the same rather confirm and if required go for separate cover for critical illness.
• No Claim
Often and ideally in most of the insured, you might as well have a claim free year. In that case the insurance companies have their way of rewarding no claim bonus, which increases your sum insured for the next year’s policy by a certain percentage. And in case of claim, the same would cut down your sum insured, so you might as well end up paying more the next year.
• Claim Settlement
There’s always a procedure to settle a claim. Seldom people go about the process when buying a health insurance, but it would be wise if you do so at that very point in time.
Whenever buying health insurance, be sure that you take an unbiased approach and advice especially if you are consulting an Insurance advisor. We would recommend that you read the different offer documents carefully and compare them well before buying a health insurance, so you end up making a wise decision.
