A Complete Guide to Health Insurance Plans for Professionals

If you are a professional, you must be a hustler who juggles deadlines, conquers clients, and powers through late nights. In this commotion, you often overlook your health. However, this should not be the case. To the least, you should keep your health insured to ensure financial protection during medical emergencies. 

In the corporate world, there are 4 types of professionals :

1. Those working at an organisation that provides insurance
2. Those working at an organisation that does not provide insurance
3. Entrepreneurs or business owners
4. Freelancers

Of these 4 categories, professionals without corporate health insurance, entrepreneurs, and freelancers are all alone, meaning they must take care of their health insurance themselves.

Even if your corporate health insurance might have covered you, you must evaluate individual health plans for sustained protection.

Why Are Health Insurance Policies Crucial For Professionals?

1. Your focus on work often makes you compromise on a healthy lifestyle
2. Your work might be demanding you to travel extensively, hiking the risks of accident 
3. You might be alone or away from your family or friends, impacting your financial support during medical emergencies.

If any of these is true for you, you must be prepared to tackle a medical emergency without the burden of finances.  Investing in health insurance lays the foundation to strengthen your health guard against medical crisis.

Health Insurance Tips For Professionals

Depending upon your journey in career as well as life, your need for health insurance varies. Let’s deep dive into how you should evaluate your needs: 

1. If you have started early in your career, you need to understand these : 

• You might not have built a financial backup yet to cover medical emergencies. 
• You might have less responsibility now but as you grow you will get more responsibilities on your shoulders.

You must be browsing investment avenues to grow your money.  But, this is the point where you should think of investing in Health Insurance – You will get it at a cheaper premium, as well as issuance is easy due to your young age.

2. If your work involves a lot of travel, consider these :

• If your work demands a lot of travel, your risk of accidents surges
• If you work in remote areas or travel frequently, you might be eating outside or unhygienic food that can result in gastrointestinal illnesses.

To ensure you are protected, consider accidental covers as well as emergency support services like ambulances to be part of your health coverage. If you travel to international locations frequently, do not miss out on ‘worldwide coverage’. 

3. If you are a senior professional and at the higher spectrum of age :

• You are naturally more vulnerable to age-related problems 
• In case of medical emergencies, you would not like to compromise on healthcare services due to their cost. 

As a senior and aged professional, one should prefer a higher coverage amount that covers advanced age-related illnesses. Modern treatment coverage should also be considered as it will make modern treatments like robotics accessible. 

Consider Your Family’s Needs While Deciding Health Insurance

As professionals, it is a possibility that your spouse, parents, or in-laws would be dependent on you. 

1. If you are married, consider including your spouse in your company-provided plan or family floater plan. If you are planning kids, it is critical to check plans covering maternity expenses. 
2. If your parents or in-laws have pre-existing medical complications, you should be careful about that aspect, too, since it can impact your financial planning in case of a medical emergency.

Few Critical Policy Benefits And Limitations To Be Careful Of

1. Waiting periods
2. Critical illness coverages
3. Room rent limit
4. Co-payments
5. Pre-existing diseases and limitations on them
6. Tax benefits
7. Modern treatments

Why Should You Have Individual Plans Irrespective Of Company-provided Plans?

For professionals who have company-provided health insurance, it is important to understand the difference between individual plans vs the company-provided insurance. 

Explore Super Top-up Plans 

If you do not want to buy comprehensive plans when you already have employer-provided health insurance coverage, you can explore super top-up plans, which add to your total coverage. How to use this?

• Use employer-provided cover amount as deductible. For example, if your employer has provided a ₹5 lakh cover,  you can buy a Super top-up of ₹50 Lakh with a declared deductible of ₹5 lakh.
• If you raise a claim for ₹7 lakhs, ₹5 lakhs will be borne by your employer’s provided plan, and the remaining ₹2 lakhs can be claimed from the super top-up plan. 
• If you claim ₹4 lakhs,  the employer’s provided plan must bear ₹4 lakhs; the super top-up plan can not be used in this scenario.
  

Super top-up plans are cheaper than comprehensive plans. Hence, you can add this to your corporate plan to enhance coverage. Compare multiple health plans & providers on platforms such as PhonePe for a hassle-free purchasing and claim settlement experience.

Key Takeaways

While focusing on career growth, don’t lose sight of maintaining your health. Health Insurance will ensure that you get the best healthcare services on time without your savings getting dented during medical emergencies. Buying an insurance policy is investing in your health; ensure you research, understand, and plan your health insurance the best way.