scorecardresearchThree low-cost strategies to improve your health insurance

Three low-cost strategies to improve your health insurance

Updated: 25 Oct 2022, 12:33 PM IST
TL;DR.

Having a health policy is a must in today’s times. However, with rising premium charges and the need to buy an adequately large health cover, relying on inexpensive ways to improve health insurance is important.

Look low-cost strategies to improve your health insurance.

Look low-cost strategies to improve your health insurance.

Getting a basic health insurance policy with a sufficient sum insured is only the first step toward sound financial planning. 

Growing medical inflation has made it necessary to have comprehensive, broad, and well-designed health insurance.

In order to ensure you are adequately covered during the time of medical emergency, one must consider ways that boost your health insurance and make it comprehensive.

  1. Increase your existing cover

Every insurer provides an option to increase the existing cover at the time of renewal. If you believe that your current health insurance policy is insufficient, you can choose to increase the coverage in your existing health insurance policy at the time of renewal by paying a proportionate additional premium.

The advantage of this is that, unlike when purchasing new health insurance, there are no waiting periods for pre-existing diseases, and a single policy is available at the time of claim, reducing the effort of managing multiple policies, etc.

2. Super top-up policy

Super top-up plans come to the rescue by providing additional protection above and beyond your existing base health insurance should a medical emergency unexpectedly knock on your door.

Super top-up plans are less expensive than buying a new individual health insurance policy as the policyholder shares the risk in the form of a deductible in the policy; the deductible is equal to the base health insurance policy coverage amount.

Super top-up plan triggers or becomes active when the total hospitalization claim exceeds the coverage of your base health insurance policy, i.e., deductible. While it is not necessary to hold an existing health insurance policy to opt for Super top-up, however in this case, the policyholder has to shell out-of-pocket expenses to the tune of the deductible in the policy and only then the super top-up policy gets active.

The advantage here is that, in a super top-up plan, the claims made within a single policy year are considered on an aggregate basis, which means that the super top-up sum insured can be used for more than one claim. 

A super top-up will trigger once the overall claim value in the policy year crosses the pre-decided threshold limit (deductible).

3. Add-ons around cumulative bonus

Another way to improve your health insurance is to purchase add-ons that increase the coverage amount available for use during claims. Some of the Riders available are Super NCB, NCB protector, and others.

Super NCB not only helps to increase your sum insured by 50% each claim-free year, up to a maximum of 100%, but it also helps to increase your total sum insured by 150% over a period of 5 claim-free years, assuming the normal NCB is 10% each year.

On the other hand, NCB protector helps you protect your Cumulative bonus from penalty should the claim arises during a policy period.

There are specific other add-ons which take care of inflation, etc.

Despite the fact that these add-ons cost extra, the overall cost of add-ons is capped at around 30%, which is unquestionably less than purchasing new health insurance.

While these are three less expensive ways to improve your health insurance. Before making a final choice, one must weigh the solutions that best meet their needs and consult a financial advisor.

In the end, only YOU and YOUR financial well-being matter.

 

Manju Dhake is the VP- Insurance of 1finance.


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First Published: 25 Oct 2022, 12:33 PM IST