A Complete Guide to Expand Your Health Insurance Coverage

With the escalating cost of medical treatments, it is important to avail health insurance for all individuals. If you do have health insurance and find it insufficient, you can expand your coverage periodically. This can be clearly explained through an example given below:

Ram took a health insurance policy of Rs.5 lakhs at the age of 26 years. After 10 years, things would change unconditionally. Now, Ram’s age is 36 years and the current medical expenses have significantly increased in the past decade. It would not be a wise decision to continue with the same health insurance coverage. So, expanding your health insurance coverage becomes necessary in order to cope-up with the current scenario and to avail maximum advantage.

There are several means to expand health insurance coverage. Some of the notable ones are given below.

Opt for Higher Coverage

Treatment for critical illnesses like cancer or heart surgery is not cheap. It can easily deplete your savings. To get the best treatment without worrying about the finances, you should opt for health insurance with higher coverage. If you are looking for a health insurance plan, you can visit an insurance web aggregator like PolicyX.com and compare various medical insurance policies and buy according to your needs and requirements.

Go for Top-up Plans

Top-up health insurance is a regular indemnity plan that offers coverage against hospitalisation costs only after the threshold limit is crossed (deductible). A top-up health insurance policy can be availed at lower costs as compared to regular health insurance plans. 

Avail Add-ons

Add-ons are the additional coverage offered by the insurer in return for an extra premium. These add-ons can be availed over and above the basic health insurance policy. Some of the important add-ons offered by the insurers are maternity benefit, critical illness, hospital cash benefit, etc. For example, you can avail of a critical illness add-on if you find yourself under high risk of critical diseases like cancer, kidney failure, heart attack, and so forth. 

Get Family Floater Plans

The family floater plan offers health insurance to the entire family under a single policy. The number of members can vary from company to company. Generally, you can include 5-6 members such as your spouse, dependent children and parents/parents-in-law. One of the biggest advantages of availing family floater policy is it’s cost-effective (no need to buy individual policies and face the burden of high premium) and offers maximum coverage under a single insurance plan.

Look for COVID-19 Specific Policies

After seeing the current situation, it’s safe to say that COVID-19 is not going anywhere soon. Sadly, there are a few things that your standard health insurance may not cover if diagnosed with COVID-19. To avoid a mountain of treatment expenses, it’s best to get proper coverage with the help of COVID specific policies- Corona Rakshak and Corona Kavach.

Conclusion

Expanding your health insurance coverage does not affect your base health insurance plan. However, you’re required to pay an additional premium to avail of its benefits. As it may put slight pressure on your wallet, it’s suggested to only expand your coverage if deemed necessary.