When you or a loved one is ill and in hospital the last thing you want to worry about is the means to pay the hospital bill. Hospital expenses reimbursement policy (called mediclaim or Health insurance policy in common parlance) enables you to pay for hospitalization expenses when you or your loved one are unfortunate enough to get admitted to a hospital.
You should take health insurance when you and your family members are healthy because you are unlikely to get the Insurance if a serious illness or disease has already set in. Answer the proposal form fully and completely without hiding any facts as it is better to get the health insurance policy at a higher premium or even not to get it at all instead of paying premium and then not getting the money when the claim arises.
Check the age up to which the policy is renewable, any sub-limits for room rents, any requirements to pay part of the eligible hospitalization expenses yourself (called co-payment), formula for increase in premium if you make a claim, formula for no claim bonus and the coverage of pre-existing disease. Or you can just fill up the form alongside and get competing offers from the leading health insurance companies. Don't forget to ask them about the parameters pointed out above.
Another policy that you may definitely need is a serious illness disability policy (also called Critical Illness Policy). When a serious illness such as a stroke or kidney failure hits you the mediclaim policy only pays for the hospitalization expenses. It obviously does not cover you for the loss of income arising from the loss of job or business due to the serious illness. This is what a critical illness policy covers. You can buy standalone critical illness policies from non-life Insurance companies or take a critical illness rider along with your life insurance policy.
Love for one's own money
Love for one's own money is a good thing! And to make sure our hard-earned money is working hard for us and our families, we need to do a little bit of home-work.
At ApnaPaisa, we make it easier for our visitors to do this home-work. We provide tools and calculators so that our visitors don't have to deal with complicated mathematical formulae. We provide detailed price-feature comparison tools so that visitors get an idea of what to look for before applying for a financial product. And above all, we provide a platform to get competing offers from the market so that whatever be the specific scenario - our visitors always get the best deal.
We're always keen to find out how we can make matters of personal finance easier and would love for you to join our growing community on Facebook and share your experiences, suggestions and comments.