How do you choose the best health insurance plans for your parents?

Answer 1

Remember those times when your parents looked after you and provided for all your needs however big or small? Your mother used to nurse you back to health whenever you fell sick while your father took you to the doctor to tend to your illness. Your mother cooked for you, made you do your homework and your father paid all your expenses and guided you in life. Now that they are old, don't you think you have a duty towards them? Thanks to the culture of our country, we treat our parents in the highest regard and look after them in their old age. Be it their routine expenses or medical ones, you strive to provide for every need. Due to the development of medical science, life expectancy has increased and so has the cost of treating ailments through newer and latest techniques. Moreover, in old age, one becomes more prone to illnesses causing the incidence of medical expenses to rise exorbitantly. Consequently, people today have become more aware towards buying a proper health plan. A family floater policy is favored as it covers the spouse, children as well as dependent parents. However, your family floater plan may not be sufficient to cover your parents' medical expenses and as such, a separate plan for your parents would be prudent.

While earlier, buying a health plan for people over 65 years of age was incomprehensible, nowadays; many insurers are offering senior citizen policies for older people. These policies have certain special terms and conditions which need to be considered before buying the plans. Let's have a look:

• Cover granted- there is a limit on the cover granted under senior citizen plans with the maximum limit of about 5 lakhs while some plans even go as high as 10 or 50 lakhs.
• Co-pay- these plans have a unique clause of co-pay where the insured undertakes to pay a percentage of the claim amount whenever accrued.
• Pre-existing diseases- surprisingly, most insurers offer a very low waiting period for pre-existing diseases while one or two provide cover without any pre-existing clause.
• Premium- the premiums are a bit higher because the risk of medical contingencies is higher in older age.