Let me share with you two events (but not fiction) that occurred at different places but brings forth two perceptions.
An old woman, kantabai, age 45, died in deprivation. She couldn’t avail medical treatment due to short of funds. Her grieved husband lamented, had he had money his wife would have surely lived longer. But alas... he didn’t have sufficient money to bear the medical expenses. Eventually she died.
On the opposite end an affluent family said NO to health insurance as they are in healthy wealthy mode and couldn’t foresee any such medical emergency even in remote future.
Was the old lady under privileged or the rich family over privileged?
One more question arises here, whether we as an individual, as a society or nation, utilising the resources properly?
Corporate is already taking care of employees’ health while govt employees too are well protected. But a large chunk of population is out of these two spheres.
Indian insurance companies offer a great deal of health insurance plans which covers almost every ailment except AIDS. Besides standard health insurance plan which insure an individual protection against diseases. Good thing is that, gone are the days of hectic claim procedure. If your hospital is empanelled with your health insurance company, you don’t need to pay either for admission or discharge (as long as your medical bills reaches touches the upper limit of your cover). You can select a high tariff room and ask your doctor to visit any no. of times since room and doctors visit charges are covered in these plans. Further more there are some plans which added some more features in standard plans i.e.
As I mentioned above we do have plans to cover almost all prevailing ailments. There are plans to cover maternity, a special plan for old age and retired people. Some special plans even cover pre-existing diseases, plans to cover cancer, dibetiese. Furthermore, u might be surprised there are plans under which you are entitled to get stipulated money if any of the enlisted disease is diagnosed, regardless of the medical expenses. If the plans stipulated to give u five lacks in case a specific disease is diagnosed, you gonna get it, not matter what your medical expenses gonna be.
For proper financial planning one should first get a sound life cover and in second step take a health plan for his family. When these two aspects are covered properly then he should go for purely investment.
