Health cover is key financial security
Vijay — a young parent with dependent parents — got a rude jolt in the past week. His father, on the right side of 60s, was admitted to a hospital with uneasiness. Diagnosis revealed that a by-pass surgery will be need to be carried out at the earliest. Now, this entails a substantial medical bill. On enquiry with his office, he was entitled a medical coverage of Rs 3 lakhs. And Vijay was expecting a substantially higher medical bill.
Now, this is not an isolated case. There have been several of such instances and in this situation, health insurance on top of the corporate medical coverage could be helpful.
Health cover to the employees is a tool of employee benefits and retention adopted by the corporates. With the increasing integration of the Indian economy with the global economy and the recent global downturn, employee health care benefit plans of the corporates are slowly dwindling. Instances of employees being asked to bear a certain percentage of the insurance premium have become common.
This is where a personal health insurance cover (individual/floater), along with critical illness cover, would have definitely reduced the financial burden on Vijay.
The personal health cover besides being useful in such times also helps when one is switching jobs (to ensure that there is no exposure). Also, with every passing age, the risk of contracting a lifestyle disease is higher. (There is a waiting period of 3-4 years for the coverage of pre-existing disease).
With the increasing number of people employed in the private sector, medical costs are set to go up. The instances of lifetime medical support as in the case of government employees are slowly getting reduced.
One needs to supplement one’s corporate health cover with a personal health cover. There are enough health insurance companies offering the coverage. Do spend some time in understanding the product and the product offerings. It is advisable to look at the following checklist — which obviously is not exhaustive — before choosing the cover:
n Sum Insured
n Reimbursement on room, boarding and nursing expenses
n Reimbursement on doctor fees
n Renewal period of the policy
n Cashless coverage
After this incident, Vijay turned wiser. He was able to settle the medical bills from his resources and has gone in for a personal health cover plan for his family. He realised —Penny wise and pound foolish, need not be repeated.
(The author is the founder of WealthWays Private Wealth Management)
Post new comment