Consider this scenario: you’ve just had a baby and the family’s expenses have suddenly doubled. Your wife is not holding a job at the moment, so you’re the sole breadwinner for the three of you. And then the worst thing happens – you fall ill and have to stay at home for at least two months.
In the two months that you are at home, considering that you went one month without pay and that you spent all your savings on your hospitalisation and treatment, did it occur to you that it made no sense to spend every rupee you had saved on your illness? In the days just after you had your baby, did you suppress the thought that if a sudden accident or disease struck you or your loved ones, you really had no backup payment options?
People such as yourself are ideal candidates for health insurance.
Investing for the future
Medical insurance is simply the corpus you set aside every month for future eventualities such as accidents and illnesses requiring hospitalisation and a long period of recovery. Instead of dipping into your current income or savings, this corpus helps tide over the crisis without affecting your life in any way.
Health insurance for hospitalisation relies on paying premiums in the present time so that a healthy corpus can be built for use in the future. Normally, people take medical insurance for the time that they need the policy to cover their hospital expenses when they are not working (such as in their old age) or for the time when a sudden accident necessitates their taking time off from work.
Medical insurance in India is, however, still largely in the nascent stage, with individuals opting for it only when an emergency looms on the horizon. However, the best time to take it is when you are in good physical condition – this helps the insuring company process your check up results and premium terms faster – and in good fiscal control. Normally, a higher return on the medical insurance plan will translate into a higher monthly pay-out; doing this when you’re still young and earning well will give the insuring company the confidence to process your application faster. The older you get, the more difficult it can become to take medical insurance.
However, some companies are offering health insurance even to senior citizens up to the age of 65 years, provided the premiums are being paid for a certain tenure and at a certain rate.
