How a Family Floater Health Insurance Plan Works?

Unlike the individual health insurance plans, the family floater medical policies allow extensive coverage to each and every member of a family under one umbrella. Hence, under family floater plans each member of the family receives equal benefit from one common coverage.  For a small family of 4 people including kids, the family floater plan seems to be an ideal option if you get a sum assured of over INR 4 lakh. So, rather than buying separate plans for parents and kids, you can club everyone under a floater coverage policy for the best health insurance.

Best Family Floater Health Insurance Plans

If you are planning to buy a family floater health insurance policy, it is very important to compare different plans by seeking quotes from different insurers or from an online portal of insurance brokers such as Paybima.com. This makes the comparison easy and helps the policyholder to buy a cost-effective and beneficial plan.

List of Some of the Top Health Insurance Plans for Family with Wide Coverage Range:

Let us now check the functioning of the best family health insurance plans in India.

How Does A Family Floater Health Insurance Plan Work?

As already discussed, under the best health insurance plans for families all members of a family are covered under a single sum assured. Lets understand the functioning of the floater plans with the help of an example.

Suppose you bought a family floater plan to cover your family of four including your spouse and 2 kids. The sum assured of your plan is 5 lakh and you are paying a yearly premium of INR 8,000 to avail the benefits of the plan.

So, in this case if one member of your family (suppose your spouse) falls ill and gets hospitalized. The total cost of the treatment came to INR 3,20.000 and you got the bill reimbursed from your insurer.

In another case, if your entire family (including spouse and kids) fell ill due to any reason and were hospitalized, the total expense of the treatment came to around INR 6,50,000. In that case, the insurer will reimburse for the complete amount and the remaining INR 1,50,000 needs to be paid from your pocket.

So, under family floater health insurance plans one person can consume the entire sum assured in one time of hospitalization or two or more members can use up the sum assured during a policy year. Whatever the case be, the insurer will pay the entire coverage amount (sum assured) as per the term of the policy, the extra expense (if any) needs to be paid by the insured from his/her own pocket.

However, the chances of all the members falling sick together or within a policy year are  thin. So, you can be rest assured that your coverage amount will not get exhausted within the policy tenure.

Let’s consider the benefits of family floater plans now.

Advantages Of Opting For Family Floater Plans

• The best thing about floater plans is that it cares for the insured as well as his/her entire family under one roof. This makes it easy to manage the policy as compared to buying individual plans for each member. Hence it serves as the best health insurance in India.
• If you are including your parents under a floater policy, it becomes much cheaper as compared to buying policies particularly meant for senior citizens
• The family floater plans allow lucrative deals for maternity coverage
• The insured can avail income tax benefits under section 80D
• These plans make it easy to add a immediate member like a newborn or your spouse

Disadvantages Of Opting For Family Floater Plans

The disadvantage with floater plans is that if a family is required to make more than a single claim during a policy year, the second claim may be a meager amount remaining in the policy after clearing the first claim already made earlier. So, you may have to pay some portion of the second claim from your own pocket.

Also, in most cases insurers of floater plans do not allow to include your parents and siblings under the plan.

Things You Should Look Out For While Buying A Floater Health Insurance Plan

Here are few things to look out for while planning to buy family floater plans:

• Check maximum renewability age to check whether there is a upper cap on entry or it offer lifelong renewability
• Check the sub-limits for sub-categories properly prior to finalizing on a floater plan
• Also, check the policy term of the health plan – whether it is annual or two year policy term
• Check if the policy is offering reinstatement benefit where the sum insured is refilled if it gets exhausted before the policy term ends
• Look for any other value added features or add-ons like free health check-up,  discounts on medical stores, etc.