When people are in the best of their physical health, the obvious question among them is why should they invest in health insurance? Especially for the people in their early career when they find themselves physically fit and miles away from any health issues, paying a premium plan for ensuring health may seem an unnecessary expenditure.
Now, there is no denying the fact that investing in the long term wealth generating investment options during your earning career is inevitable. This will definitely help you to achieve your goals and maintain the expected standard of living of yours and your dependents even after your retirement.
However, when you retire, you also become old. It is a fact that old age brings health issues along with it. And hence, it is highly necessary for you to incorporate healthcare planning within the budget of your family financial planning.
What is health insurance?
If you search the meaning of the word ‘health insurance’ on Google, you will get the result as “Insurance taken out to cover the cost of medical care.”
In simple words, health insurance is a contract between you (policyholder) and the insurance company, where you pay a regular premium against which the latter assumes the responsibility in meeting your medical expenses. With increasing medical costs, having a medical insurance policy has become highly important for every family in India.
Although increasing access to advanced electronic media has created awareness among the people in India towards the importance of buying health insurance plans. Nonetheless, the majority of the population in India still fails to understand the importance of getting medical coverage for themselves.
If you have already realized the significance of having Mediclaim for yourself and your family members, you are a step ahead from the majority. However, In case you don’t, let us help you explain why you should consider health insurance as an investment and not an expense.
6 Reasons Why You Should Get Health Insurance
1. Being Medically insured can help you avoid facing financial instability in future:
Medical expenses are going up day by day. Moreover, you may need to incur any emergency medical expense at any point in time. If you have not made separate provision for the same, you have to dig into your savings or sell off your assets to meet the medical needs of yours or your family. Buying a health insurance policy gives you the assurance of financial stability during any medical urgency.
2. Medical insurance enables you to get the best health treatment
Shortage of funds could make you opt for a reasonable medical treatment instead of choosing the best of the lot. Having a good Mediclaim can assure you the best treatment for overcoming toughest of health conditions.
3. You can get the coverage of hospitalization charges
In the last few years, not only the medical costs, but even the expenses of the out-patient department and diagnostic tests have also gone up a lot. This has further increased the importance to buy a medical insurance policy. The health insurance policies not only provide adequate coverage of the hospitalization expenses but also enable meeting the costs incurred in diagnostic and OPD tests, earlier and later of a specific time period as mentioned by the policy.
4. The modern dynamic lifestyle demands medical insurance
Over the past few decades, our lifestyle has undergone a plethora of changes. Frequent traveling, busy work schedules, unhealthy eating habits and a rise in the level of pollution in big cities have exposed us to the risk of new health issues. And that’s why medical insurance has become a necessary part of our life.
5. Opting for medical insurance will help in your retirement planning
During the old age, your income may decrease but your medical expenses will be high. However, here if you already know that your health is insured, you can spend on different options of your choice after retirement.
Health insurance plans also come with lifelong renewability features. You can renew your health plans until your death and there is no such age limit for it. This is going to be of immense help in the later stage of your life. Having medical insurance will offer you a lot of flexibility and will also reduce the burden on your kids to take care of your medical expenses.
6. You can enjoy the benefit of tax deductions on your health insurance plan
The health insurance premiums that you pay for yourself, spouse and dependent children are eligible to get tax exemption under Section 80D of the Income Tax Act, 1961 up to Rs 25,000. Moreover, if you or your spouse is a senior citizen (60 years or more), the limit will go up to Rs 30,000. By opting for health insurance plans, you can enjoy these tax deductions benefits. Check out this blog to study further regarding the tax benefit on health insurance as per Union Budget 2018.
Is there any right age to buy a health insurance policy?
Frankly speaking, there is no appropriate age to buy a medical insurance policy.
However, if you buy a health plan in your early age, you need to pay quite less for opting most policies. As you grow old, the premiums which you require to pay for your health insurance policy increase will also gradually increase.
The reason being that the associated health issues and risk goes up with time. Medical insurance premiums are dependent on the age of the policyholder, his/her medical history, where he/she lives, etc.
Further, an important option that you need to consider while purchasing a health insurance policy is selecting critical illness medical insurance policy. The critical illness policy offers to pay a fixed amount if you are diagnosed with any critical illness which is under the coverage of that policy.
You can either buy only the critical illness insurance policy or you can also opt for purchasing it as an add-on when you buy your regular health insurance. In case you are diagnosed with a critical disease, this critical illness policy does act as a great support to your mainstream health insurance plan. Besides, here are five must know things regarding critical illness insurance plan.
