Importance of Individual Health Insurance in India

Health related problems and medical expenses never announce their arrivals and their unexpected arrivals not only upset your health but also upset your entire financial setup. Changing lifestyles and a shift from healthy lifestyle to an irregular and not so healthy lifestyle has become rampant and is affecting almost everyone. This shift brings in health issues and easily attracts physical conditions like diabetes, heart problems, cancer and the likes. With surging costs of all medical procedures and treatments, any such occurrence can burn a hole in your pocket. Only a Health Insurance plan can save you from such a disaster. Needless to say that it is one of the best investment you can make to ensure that your finances are not disturbed with any such untoward happening.

A good health insurance plan will give you a package that covers all your personal health and medical related expenses. Any good insurance plan can also give you added benefits like cashless treatments that save you from the hassle of going through huge payments and later on getting reimbursed for the same. Some extended facilities can even include a round-the-clock helpline and ambulance referral facility. Such policies are meant for an individual and one can insure oneself, the spouse, dependent children and dependent parents.

Some medical insurance policies require you to go through a medical checkup, but most of the good ones these days don’t even require those formalities. Health Insurance Policies also get tax benefit under the Income Tax Act of India. It hence comes up as a good investment where you not only secure your medical expenses but also save a lot of tax with them.

The best feature that a Health Insurance Policy can provide is the benefit to go for a cashless treatment or surgery at a good number of hospitals across the country. This includes all your hospital related expenses when you are either undergoing a treatment or surgery at one of the hospitals the policy covers. In such a case the entire expenses are paid by the Insurance Company to the hospital and you do not need to shell out anything from your own pocket. At times we do not have much cash with us and a medical emergency can cause problems even when we have a Mediclaim as we need to bear the expenses through our pockets till it is reimbursed to us. A cashless facility saves us from that anxiety and also saves us from a cash crunch.

Individual health Insurance plans can be extended to the immediate family too. You can take individual health covers for your spouse, children and parents. Such policies however do no extend a cover to expenses on ailments that were present at the time of purchase of the policy.

The best way to choose a good policy is to do a little research about the Company and compare the various options available in the market. Since information is easily available online, it is pretty easy to search for such policies.