Medical insurance acts like a safety net for you and your family, covering all medical expenses. It primarily helps to reduce your hospital bills, doctor visits and even costs before and after treatment. The right plan protects your health, along with reducing the impact on your savings.
To make a better choice, here are the top five features that can help you to choose the best health insurance.
1. Cashless Hospitalisation
Not having to worry about upfront payments is one of the best reliefs that come with a medical emergency. With cashless hospitalisation, you can visit a network hospital that is tied up with your health insurance provider, get admitted, and the insurer will directly settle your bill. This process saves you from the stress of arranging funds at those critical times.
Most of the leading medical insurance providers offer claim access to thousands of network hospitals. This step helps you avail this facility across your neighbourhood hospitals. Always look for a vast network of hospitals so you can get monetary support during medical emergencies in the hospital where you are admitted.
Furthermore, cashless hospitalisation often includes a pre-authorisation process that begins once you are admitted to the hospital. This process ensures smoother and faster settlements, along with avoiding excessive paperwork needs.
2. Daycare Coverage
In the past few decades, medical science has significantly advanced, and treatments do not require longer hospital stays. Many surgeries, diagnostics, and treatment often takes just a few hours. This is where day care coverage becomes essential; it helps to cover the medical costs beyond hospital charges.
The best medical insurance plans should cover a broad list of such procedures, including eye surgery, dialysis, chemotherapy, etc. This ensures you don’t cover the overall medical cost for treatments that do not require overnight hospitalisation. It is a small feature with a big impact to protect your overall health.
Most of these day care procedures are covered in the list of the best medical insurance plans. This benefit has over 500 treatments covered by some of the policies. When selecting a plan, it should be verified as to how many and what kind of procedures are covered.
3. Pre and Post-Hospitalisation Expenses
It is easy to think of insurance as something that helps you to cover your medical expenses once you are admitted to the hospital. But in reality, expenses start well before that in the form of doctor consultations, diagnostic tests and medicine bills.
The best mediclaim policy goes beyond your hospital bills. To ensure that, you should look for coverage that includes expenses incurred before hospitalisation and post-hospitalisation. This feature ensures that the entire treatment process is financially protected. It is particularly helpful for chronic or complex illnesses that require follow-up care.
4. Free Annual Health Check-ups
You should know that staying healthy is as important as getting treated properly if you have any health issues. That’s why preventive care is becoming an important part of today’s health insurance plans. Many insurers now offer you free annual health checkups even if no claim has been made. Some of them also offer these checkups for your family. Make sure you gather every little detail before choosing them.
These checkups often include basic tests like blood tests, cholesterol checks, sugar level monitoring, etc. Checking up on your health also depends on your age and the medical insurance plan you have chosen. This feature helps to prevent the buildup of severe health issues in your body.
For instance, tests like MRI, blood tests, or scans are done before getting admitted. In many conditions, these health check-ups are cashless at partnered diagnostics centres. The results of your health records are electronically stored, so your doctor can see the report to assist in any medical interventions.
5. Lifetime Renewability and No-Claim Benefits
Lifetime renewability means to keep your health insurance active as long as you renew it. This feature is especially important as medical needs tend to increase over time. Furthermore, many policies reward you for being healthy if you don’t make any claims in a year. This facility is known as the no-claim bonus. It can be given to you as a discount on your premium or an increase on your coverage amount.
These benefits add long-term value and encourage policyholders to stay healthy. If you are looking for the best health insurance in India, then these kinds of long-term features matter a lot.
Final Thoughts
Health insurance plans can vary depending on your provider, but some features make a practical difference in how useful a policy is when you need it the most. Features like cashless treatment, coverage for tests, follow-ups, and annual check-ups are highly valuable in insurance related to health.
If you are comparing to get the best option for you, then these five features are good to go for finding a plan that fits your needs.