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All You Need To Know About Health Insurance Before Buying

Purchasing health insurance for you and your family’s well-being would be a wise decision. Especially, in today’s era of expenses and costs for medical treatments sky-rocketing. And still if you haven’t insured your health, it’s time for you to pull your sleeves up.

But before you go ahead and take the big step, just make sure you know everything (or almost everything) about buying health insurance.

What Is Health Insurance?

Health insurance is a type of insurance that covers the insured’s medical and surgical expenses. Depending on the policy terms and conditions, the insurer either pays the insured by reimbursement or offers a cashless facility.

Things You Need To Be Aware Of Before Buying Health Insurance

There are certain things you need to be aware of before buying health insurance for the well-being of you and your family. To help you buy a right health plan as per your requirement, follow the below checklist:

  1. Are you using cheaper premium as the main tool?

Buying a health policy with a cheaper premium would mess up things big time. This is because a plan with a lowest premium might not offer good benefits and features and would in turn have a list of exclusions too. Before you buy a health insurance, ensure that your medical conditions of you and your family are covered. So, don’t use premium as the main yardstick while buying a health insurance plan.

  1. Are you depending on your employer-provided health insurance?

The employer provided health insurance plans are not tailor made as per your requirement. This perk provided by your employer is good but it may not provide you sufficient coverage. To add to it, when you are unemployed, you are left unprotected. So, it’s always good to buy a separate health insurance policy that covers you throughout.

  1. Does your policy cover pre/post hospitalization expenses?

Any medical expenses covered before or after hospitalization are called as pre/post hospitalization expenses. Certain medical treatments extends beyond hospitalization. Doctor’s follow-up fees and any follow-up investigations are covered under post hospitalization expenses. Before you buy a health insurance policy, ensure you check the pre/post hospitalization expenses are covered or not.

  1. Is there a co-payment clause?

Co-payment is nothing but your share of claim amount which is pre-defined and that rest needs to be settled by the insurer. You might find a health insurance that is cheap, however it may not offer you complete coverage if it has a co-payment clause. It is recommended to opt for a health insurance policy that has low or no co-pay.

  1. Did you read the fine print on the policy document?

If you do not want to disappoint yourself, read the fine print carefully. You might wonder what is health insurance? You will find the page from Coverfox extremely useful which tells about the benefits associated with health insurance plans and its type. Read the page carefully  to get the answers to all your questions.

  1. Does your health insurance offer a wide range of network hospitals?

Before you buy a health insurance plan, ensure you check the list of network hospitals and also review the facilities it offers. You can avail the benefit of cashless treatments in such network hospitals. Besides, if you travel for work or leisure, your health insurance should also travels with you. Therefore, it is important to check if you avail cashless facilities in network hospitals in the cities you travel. Ensure you are comfortable with the empaneled hospitals with both quality and convenience perspective.

  1. Did you check the claim settlement ratio of the insurance company you plan to opt for?

This should be an important aspect to look for before you buy a health insurance plan. A claim settlement ratio defines the company’s efficiency and time to settle the claims. Higher the claim settlement ratio, faster would be the claim settlement time. This shows that the insurance company is doing pretty well with genuine claims.

So, knowing what is health insurance is not sufficient. Educating yourself about health insurance that covers a wide variety of medical needs is even more important. All you need to ensure is you have chosen the plan carefully.

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