By Liam Thomas
Advancing age often brings along many medical problems and thus, health insurance is extremely important for seniors. Despite the importance of having coverage, a lot of senior citizens do not take health insurance or keep themselves underinsured. One of the major reasons for this seems to be the high costs of premiums for health insurance due to loading which usually kicks in due to age.
However, that is no reason to stay without coverage. Remember that a single illness and resulting hospitalization can serve to drain out your entire retirement savings. Having sufficient health insurance is the only way by which you can protect yourself from facing such dire straits.
But what about costly premiums?
The good news is that with a bit of careful planning and awareness, seniors too can secure health insurance at an affordable cost. Let’s take a look.
- Opt for regular plans
Most senior citizens tend to opt in for specific senior citizen health insurance plans. Now, these plans may sometimes have much higher premiums that can fall out of budget for you. Experts recommend that senior citizens should first check whether they are eligible for normal health insurance plans. Most normal health insurance plans set an age limit of around 65 years for eligibility. So, if you qualify for these normal plans, you might actually end up enjoying a cheaper premium than what you would have had to pay for a senior citizen specific plan. This is because normal health insurance plans have a large number of young policyholders who rarely make claims and therefore balance out the risk for the insurer. Once you get signed up with a normal plan, you usually enjoy lifetime renewability.
- Consider a family floater plan
Medical coverage might also work out to be much cheaper for you if you choose to be a part of your working child’s family floater plan. A family floater health insurance plan covers all insured individuals in the policy for a single premium. This kind of coverage actually proves to be cheaper as opposed to paying individual premiums for each one. It is quite rare that all family members will make a claim in the same year and so, everyone usually gets their fair share of coverage.
- Consider a higher co-pay
If you are physically fit and don’t have any major health issues, you might want to consider a health insurance policy with a higher co-pay. This is one of the best ways to reduce the amount you pay on your health insurance premium. Do make sure, however, that you have sufficient funds in the bank to manage your percentage of the co-pay when the need arises.
Finally, it is equally important to have a sufficient corpus of funds for certain out-of-pocket medical expenses. Health insurance might not cover you completely for day care procedures, OPD and so on. We hope that this article will help you secure the medical insurance coverage you need. Good luck.
