A health cover to shelter your family members

The best way to keep your family safe during medical emergencies like hospitalization or illnesses is to buy suitable health plan.Often people make a mistake and go for individual policy purchase which proves to be a costly affair. Family floater insurance plans are one of the best family cover plans offered by insurance companies to cover you and your family together on shared basis and with no individual limit for each member covered under the floater plan.

Unlike, individual health plans which cover people on a separate basis, this plan brings critical health care cover under a single umbrella. It works with the probable fact that all the members wouldn’t fall ill at once or will have the same hospital expenses. So, the cover is provided wherever the need arises. Thus, if any one of the member falls ill, the coverage up to sum insured, is available while the other healthy members are also covered. Thus, your entire family will have wider coverage to hospitalized members being supported by the non-hospitalized one.

Ideally, a family health insurance plan will incorporate spouse and his children. Since, parents are age old and may be prone to pre-existing diseases, it is better to keep them on a separate plan depending on their needs and requirements. You can put them on special plans which offer extended coverage.

While purchasing plan most people try to imitate friends or blindly follow the agent words. However, such is not the case, every family has its own needs  and preferences, they health concerns. Therefore, you should choose your family floater insurance plan carefully taking into consideration income source, risk appetite, family health issues, inflation costs and future needs.

Some factors to keep in mind are as follows:

Sum  Insured

Consider your family size, pre-existing disease and health requirement before selecting the right sum insured value for your family. Choose a sum insured, such that even if more than one family member is hospitalized there is some amount left for other members too.

Top Up plans

Most of the times it happens hospitalization soak up the sum assured and other family member are shorten up with the cover. Top Up plans prove crucial at such point of time topping up your health plan proves vital and easy affair instead of buying new policy.

They have two variants a regular top-up and a super top-up. The only difference between the two is the threshold value or compulsory deductible. This value states the amount above which the top-up plan would be activated. In a regular top-up plan the amount will be utilized in single hospitalization process. While in super top-up plan you can use the value in multiple installments.

Always share the right information with the insurance provider. People tend to hide habits like smoking, drinks, tobacco, heart attack, low or high bp, etc. to avoid increasing premiums. But this will indirectly affect the coverage amount of your family floater insurance plan. Your family member might receive less coverage facilities if figured later. Therefore, being honest is the best policy. 

Health insurance companies are associated with empanelled hospitals who offer cashless treatment. Alternatively, you can take the treatment and apply for reimbursement with bill submissions later on to the insurance company. Co-payment is one good way to curb your premium expense.  However, you will have to pay a portion of your medical expense at the time of hospitalization.

Some health plans have defined limit upto to which your room rent per day would be covered and in some case, companies will define the room type for which your expense will be covered. This is termed as “room rent limit” facility.