Steps to Buy Health Insurance Online

Having a health insurance plan is a wise decision to save on your huge medical bills and to cope with medical expenses in terms of critical illnesses, but all these benefits will be available to you only when you choose a good health insurance policy from the right insurance company. Sometimes when you buy health insurance online without doing enough research about the policy and its provider, there are chances of going wrong. This is not to frighten you, but to make people aware of what health insurance products they are choosing. One has to estimate the overall risk factors associated with your health and correlate them with the Steps to Buy Health Insurance.

Seek for Quote Online

The best part about buying an online health insurance policy is the facility of getting free quotations from different insurance companies and being able to compare different products and their features in order to choose the one that suits your needs. There are many health insurance comparison tools available online, which you can use to do the right comparative analysis about different policies.

Health Insurance Types

When buying a Health insurance plan, typically a customer is concerned more about the family than himself. Thus insurance companies provide different types of plans for different requirements like individual plans, family plans, senior citizen plans, etc The insurance companies have even come up with plans which include health insurance for parents. When you choose products that cover the whole family, the chances of benefits you can avail yourself would be more.

Steps to Buy Health Insurance

As the topic itself suggested to you, buying family health insurance plans online requires certain cautious steps from your side. You have to do thorough research on following before purchasing a health insurance policy online

Sum Assured – Based on your existing health insurance cover, you should get a policy that provides you an adequate cover. Basically, a person should know how much amount he wants as coverage because sometimes after buying the policy you think that coverage amount is not enough, and it worries you a little and it’s like you’re doing the same thing twice. For more coverage then you will have to buy a top-up plan, it is much better that you understand your needs and then buy the sum assured health plan accordingly.

Cashless Mediclaim Facility – In times of emergency, sometimes it is not possible to arrange large sums of money for treatments, thus a cashless mediclaim facility is very important. No one knows about its upcoming moment, but everyone expects better and that is probably the reason why people buy policies. The cashless facility provides you best way to get treatment without wasting time, It is said that the best service is what you get with time, and the cashless mediclaim facility does exactly the same.

Network Hospitals – Check for the network hospitals in the policy you shortlist. It is important to have some of your good neighborhood hospitals on that list so that you do not have to go far away in case of emergencies. The cashless treatment facility is only available in-network hospitals of your insurer company, every insurance company has a network hospital across the country but before buying the policy you need to know about the network hospital of your insurer company in your area. Otherwise, it would be wrong for you because in such a situation you have to pay on your own and you have to claim for reimbursement.

Pre-existing Diseases – Look for coverage on pre-existing diseases, mostly insurance companies start the cover after 2-4 years. Having a pre-existing disease is not a new thing, and we all know that during the old age period of life most people suffered from the disease. The insurance company covers pre-existing diseases, but might be you have to pay a higher premium, and also you have to wait till the waiting period is over.

Age Limit for Renewal – There are insurance products that have an age limit set for renewals which means they would not renew a policy after a certain age, whereas there are some insurance products that offer lifetime renewals. Go for the one offering lifetime renewals and nowadays every insurance policy offers you lifetime renewability.

Exclusions and Waiting Period – Some insurance products might ask you for a waiting period before you can make a claim. Go through the exclusions and waiting period as defined in the policy document.

Sub-limits – Some insurance products might have sub-limits defined like a limit on daily room rent or limit on ICU charges etc. Look for a product with reasonable sub-limits or no sub-limits at all.

No Claim Bonus – Some policies offer bonuses (in terms of Sum Assured or Premium) if there is no claim against the policy for the whole year. These bonuses can range from 5%-100% of Sum Assured. The bonus percentage increases with the time if you will not claim continuously till 3-5 years, these non-claim years help to increase the bonus percentage.

Critical Illness Cover – Some insurance products offer riders for critical illnesses like cancer, heart attack, etc. which typically are very expensive to treat. It is a good idea to buy these riders if they are not already bundled in the basic health insurance policy.

Claim Settlement – Check for the claim settlement process to see if a TPA will be involved in claim settlement or the insurance company would directly settle the claim. Prefer an insurance product where the insurance company directly settles the claim. Claim settlement ratio reports make stuff transparent for the customer, with the help of CSR report you can justify the performance of the insurance company in particular. Being a customer, you never want to get cheated and this is why IRDA launches CSR report every year.

Do thorough research about the insurance company to ensure that it is a licensed company and deals in a genuine way. Also, it becomes important to check the confidentiality of the company because you share all your personal information with them.

Follow these steps and confidently buy health insurance online.