Healthy Living Through Health Insurance: A Necessity Not an Option

Two things are essential for a pleasant life – (i) physical health and (ii) financial health. Rising healthcare costs and increasing health hazards have built a strong relation between the physical and fiscal health. You have good health, chances are you will be performing great, making decisions and rising the ladder financially. Fall in ill and chances are your financial health will also take a hit for the worse.

Many of us who are putting in efforts to live healthy often have this notion of invincibility. But the truth is there are no exceptions when it comes to healthcare, from a 15-year-old teenager to a 45-year-old seen it all gentlemen and women, all are prone to the risk of elongated illness.

What if?

The question then, is not about how healthy you are, but what will you do if you fall ill? It may need hospitalization, day care, surgeries, medicines and more, and if you are to bear all these costs out of your pocket, you know you are financially doomed. After waking up from that sickbed, you’ll have to break your back to build that same fortune that went away in your or your loved one’s treatment.

In such a scenario, how will it be if someone can support you financially, and share the financial burden of getting back your health?

Health insurance is one such thing.

You understand that not everyone in the world falls ill at the same time. Therefore, if everyone is contributing to a common fund annually, this fund can be used for the treatment of the small number (relatively) of people who are unwell in the year. This is the concept behind the health insurance policies.

health

Situation Analysis

Now imagine a 25-year-old person who has just started working. What is the probability that he/she will have any savings to pay for a weeklong hospitalization expense (costing approx. Rs. 100,000 to Rs. 150,000)?

Almost nil.

This situation may not just be true for 25-year-old, even at the age of 45, when you are supposed to have built a good amount of wealth, a weeklong hospitalization can challenge your goals and investment portfolio.

Solution

However, if you have a health plan, you may be relieved by paying just 10 to 15% of total amount. Thus, keep not just your physical health but also safeguard the financial one with health insurance.

Now a medical insurance will enable you to either get cashless treatment or will reimburse the money you spent from the pocket. But not all visits to the family doctor will be refunded by the insurer. Any health insurance will only cover specific situations.

For example, upon hospitalization money spent on medicine, nursing, consultation fee, room rent, etc. will be covered by the policy. But in the case of day treatment, which does not require hospitalization, health insurance may not share the burden.

But many of the expensive day treatments which are not frequent in nature can actually be covered by the health policy. If you are planning to invest in a policy, health insurance plans from HDFC ERGO offers many such benefits. Additionally, you may add riders to cover most of the critical illnesses.

Critical Illnesses

Critical illnesses can be physically and financially destructive as the treatment can be rather expensive. To counter this kind of setback, a critical illness rider can be added to the regular health policy. The sum assured for critical illness can be 3 to 5 times of the sum assured of health policy. For example: if you add a 3x rider of critical illness on a health policy which has a sum assured of Rs. 500,000, critical illness cover will be of Rs. 15,00,000.

The critical illness money is payable in whole if the insured is diagnosed with a dreaded disease (e.g. cancer, heart attack, etc.) and survives long enough to undergo treatment. Usually, these procedures require a lump sum amount to be deposited, while even afterward money will be needed for some time while the insured rebuilds his/her financial life.

Thus, the health insurance can be one very useful tools in your healthy lifestyle. While you make every effort to live healthily and avoid mishaps, a health policy will ensure that you are not burdened by an unforeseen accident and continue your healthy physical and financial lives.

Image Source: http://dps.auth.gr/el/health-care