Give Your Parents the Gift of Health Insurance via PayBima’s Khushi Ka Tohfa

Why Give Your Parents the Gift of Health Insurance?

As our parents get older, all they want and expect from us is a little bit of care and concern for their needs. Their needs are very limited too. As they age, their prime requirement is taking care of their health – physically and mentally. And to ensure this, they often end up incurring huge expenses on healthcare.

In times like these, a health insurance policy for seniors comes in handy, providing financial coverage for their medical costs. This means that your parents can now live their retired life without worrying over how to meet expensive healthcare needs and avail the best treatment for common health conditions without shelling out huge money from their pocket.

Health insurance provides the perfect answer to all these and much more!

Benefits of Health Insurance for Parents or Senior Citizens

Let’s look at some of the best advantages that a health insurance plan can provide to the elderly:

1. Offers a high sum insured:

Sum insured is the amount of money promised to the policyholder under a health insurance policy. In this case, when you buy a mediclaim policy for your parents (policyholders), they would become entitled to receive a considerable amount of sum insured which would further guarantee that they can comfortably meet all their healthcare needs without a worry.

2. Covers pre-existing diseases for parents:

As their age progresses, your parents might get exposed to certain immune disorders or diseases. It is quite possible that they might have some pre-existing diseases or health conditions at the time of buying an insurance plan. The advantage of a health insurance policy for parents is that it provides coverage for pre-existing diseases. However, a waiting period of 2-4 years may exist for such coverage.

3. Offers health protection for life:

This is one of the most important benefits of health insurance plans for parents. They provide financial protection to the elderly to meet their healthcare needs for the entire life. Senior citizen plans generally feature lifetime renewability, meaning that the plan can be renewed upon its term expiry up to the death of the policyholder (lifetime).

4. Covers critical illnesses:

In case your parents are unfortunately diagnosed with a critical health condition, such as heart attack, cancer, stroke, and the like, health insurance for parents above 60 would generally cover the financial cost of availing treatment for these conditions. The cost is usually higher so financial assistance from a health insurance policy would come of great help at these times.

How to Buy Health Insurance for Parents?

You would only want the best health insurance for your parents because they only deserve the best. This is why it would help to keep a few important points in mind before buying a mediclaim plan for your parents:

1. Look for a minimum waiting period:

Most health insurance plans for seniors come with a mandatory waiting period to claim coverage for pre-existing health conditions. This is done to help prevent loss to the insurer because the policyholder might purchase the policy to cover cost for a planned treatment for a pre-existing disease. This is why several senior citizen plans have a waiting period of at least 2-3 years wherein no pre-existing condition claim would be covered by the insurer. It’s therefore important to choose a policy with a minimum waiting period to avoid inconvenience to the insured.

2. Look for sufficient coverage of healthcare costs:

While you may want to consider adding your dependent parents under a family floater insurance plan, if you already have one active for other members of the family. However, please note that in the case of senior citizens, with growing age, the rate of premium increases on the family floater plan. This would add further burden on your pocket. Therefore, the ideal situation would be to buy a separate individual health insurance plan for your parents. The policy would exclusively cover healthcare costs for only your parents, without burdening your finances.

3. Look for the policy’s renewal age limit:

Your health insurance plan would have an entry and exit age limit. The entry age means the age at which the policyholder can apply for the plan and the exit limit refers to the maximum age at which the policy is permitted to be renewed, in case of term expiry. In general, most health insurance policies would have an exit policy between 75 and 80 years of age. This means that the policy would not be allowed for renewal in case the age of the insured is beyond this age range. This is why try and always look out for the age limit defined for each policy at the time of purchase. It’s a good idea to seek the ones that offer protection for as long as possible (until the death of the parent).