There has been a huge surge in demand for health insurance plans in the last few years and more since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the ever-increasing lifestyle diseases and healthcare costs. A health insurance policy is the best alternative to ease the extra burden of medical expenses on your pocket and availing of medical treatments seamlessly.
A health insurance policy acts as a protection cover in case you or your family members are hospitalised in case of a medical emergency or treatment of an illness. Buying a health insurance plan safeguards you against the financial implications of medical costs in such times of certain or uncertain medical emergencies.
You might think that your health insurance policy offers an adequate cover to meet the treatment expenses in medical emergencies, but it will not come as a surprise since we witnessed in the past year that there is a chance you might run out of the sum insured. It becomes imperative in such situations to increase your sum insured and cover your treatment cost
Thus, you may need to consider increasing your health cover to get adequate protection against completely unexpected medical emergencies and tackle the exorbitant treatment costs at private hospitals.
Take a look at the following three ways to increase your health insurance cover:
1. Buy a super top-up plan: Increasing your health insurance cover by getting a super top-up plan can be highly beneficial. The super top-up plans are specially designed to provide extra coverage over a particular deductible, the amount that is borne by the policyholder by directly paying from their own pocket or via their basic health insurance plan. In case, there are multiple claims within a year and the policyholder has already exhausted the original sum insured then the super top-up plan pays the extra amount.
The benefits of the plan include day-care treatment, in-patient treatment, pre-and post-hospitalisation expenses, cumulative bonus, etc.
2. Increase sum insured while renewing policy: You get a choice to increase your policy coverage, or the sum insured at the time of your policy renewal, which also provides you with an advantage, that your existing waiting period does not get extended or renewed with it, which could be the case for shifting or buying a new policy altogether.
Increasing your sum insured at the time of renewing your health insurance policy may help you get adequate coverage for better financial protection.
3. Buy a comprehensive family health policy: A family health insurance policy is a type of health insurance plan that is bought for the whole family where the premium and the total sum insured is shared amongst all family members. Purchasing family health insurance can be more beneficial than buying just an individual health insurance plan since one can obtain more medical coverage for various treatment expenses and medical needs by paying a single premium.
Adequate health coverage is crucial, as you may never know when a health emergency can strike you. If you are looking for additional sum-assured, or want to increase your health insurance coverage, opt for a top-up plan, or buy add-on insurance cover in case of an emergency.
(The writer is Executive Vice President & Chief Technical Officer, Kotak Mahindra General Insurance Company Ltd)
