Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic became a norm worldwide, we were thrown into a healthcare crisis. The pandemic also impacted the economic and social stability of families in every corner of the world. As we adjust to the new normal, it is becoming extremely apparent how crucial it is to prepare for any eventualities that may come our way.
While a vaccine may help us fight the virus, we must ensure we get the medical attention we need during unfortunate events. Out of the different ways to protect ourselves from unpredictable events, opting for a health insurance plan is one of the best ways to go about it.
Health insurance plans are insurance policies that will offer you financial coverage for the expenses resulting from a planned medical procedure or a medical emergency. The benefits of health insurance help us deal with the medical expenses that come with treating an illness or an injury. Therefore, every earning citizen must understand the importance of buying health insurance in India and purchasing it.
Reasons Why It Is Important To Buy Health Insurance in Today’s Era
- Your employer’s health insurance coverage is not adequate: Most employers in the country offer their employees health insurance coverage. The coverage can either be only for you or for your entire family.
The health insurance coverage offered by employers is different for different companies. While the health insurance plan can be quite beneficial for you, it’s not designed to meet your specific medical requirements.
Along with this, most health insurance plans provided by employers expire once you leave the employer. Therefore, you must own a health insurance plan designed to meet your specific requirements and help you deal with medical emergencies in the long run.
- We aren’t living in healthy times: As per health experts, it was found that the population’s health is on a steep decline. Most individuals are either experiencing high-risk or mild medical issues.
With stressful workloads and hectic schedules, most individuals haven’t kept their physical well-being a priority. However, if you don’t take care of your well-being while you’re young, you may face severe issues when you’re old.
Getting a health insurance policy at an older age can be a bit expensive. Therefore, getting health insurance when you’re young and in good health will help you later in life.
- Hospitalisation is not the only expense: You must have worked hard and built a solid financial foundation for yourself. When you’re financially secure, dealing with medical bills is not a big task.
However, dealing with something as serious as critical illnesses involves a huge amount of financial expenditures. If you’re in a situation where you have to deal with these situations, you will have to take care of the additional charges like OPD, diagnosis test, ambulance charges, etc., out of your pocket. These expenditures can cause a severe dent in your life savings, and they can also affect your financial stability.
However, with a health insurance plan in India, your medical bills would be taken care of, and you would not have to worry about these expenditures.
- Tax benefits: Akin to life insurance, health insurance also offers you tax benefits on the premiums paid. As per Section 80D of the Income Tax Act, health insurance premiums are eligible for tax benefits. If you’re under 60 years of age, you can avail of a deduction of ₹25,000 on the premiums you have paid for yourself, your spouse or your children. For senior citizens, the limit is ₹50,000.
- Increasing medical costs: Over the past few years, medical costs have risen exponentially around the country. When the cost of getting medical treatment is expensive, dealing with medical expenses out of your pocket can impact your financial stability heavily. However, you will only have to focus on recuperating from your illness with a medical insurance policy instead of the medical bills piling up.
Therefore, it is important to get health insurance these days. Getting health insurance these days is quite easy. Insurance companies have launched their official website to help customers buy health insurance policies online.
Here’s how you can buy health insurance online:
- Identify your requirements: You must identify your health insurance requirements before beginning with the purchase. Once you have understood your requirements clearly, you can find a suitable insurance policy for yourself.
- Research: You must conduct a decent amount of research online about the different health insurance plans available for you. You must visit your preferred insurer’s website and look through the policies they offer. It is important that you compare the different policies available for you before you make a decision.
- Finalise the plan: Once you have found a suitable plan, you must read through the coverage and look through the different add-ons you wish to include in your health insurance plan. You can use the health insurance premium calculator to estimate how the premium amount is impacted through the addition of these add-ons.
- Provide important details: You must provide important details like your name, address, contact details, and medical history. You must provide your medical history truthfully.
- Make the payment: Once you have finalised the plan, you can make the payment, and your insurer will send you the policy document after the purchase.
Conclusion
Health insurance is an important purchase in our lives. With a health insurance plan, we deal with various other bills apart from hospitalisation bills. Along with this, they also provide several other benefits. Insurance companies have also made the process of purchasing health insurance extremely easy for customers.
