Today, adequate health Insurance coverage is extremely necessary because of ever growing expenses of medical treatment. Even a small visit to the doctor can burn a hole in our pocket and when the situation is critical and calls for serious medical attention, you may require extensive financial assistance. Depending on the type of insurance that you have chosen, it can also cut down the trouble of extensive paper works in the hospital and other logistic hassles. Once you have chosen a health insurance that suits your needs the best, now its time to know how you can reduce your health insurance costs. So let’s know about 5 ways to reduce your health insurance premium.
Here are the 5 useful tips to help lower your Health Insurance Premium:
- Choose a higher deductible: The amount that you pay from your pocket before an insurance cover starts in called deductible. You will have to pay a reduced amount as premium for your health insurance cover by paying a higher deductible in the beginning. Voluntary deductible option is offered by some policies through which the customer can pay part of the medical bill himself and then claim a percentage of the bill amount from the insurer. While choosing a deductible, you must also exercise caution, as higher deductibles will compel you to pay healthcare cost from your own pocket. Deductibles can be of two types:
- Compulsory: this is the amount that the customer must pay from his pocket. The remaining amount can be claimed from the insurer.
- Voluntary: The optional amount above the compulsory deductible, which the policyholder decides whether or not to get at the time of buying or renewing.
- Buy medical insurance when you are young and healthy: A major factor that effects the premium is your medical history and if you have any pre-existing health conditions. It is an obvious fact, with aging more health problem starts manifesting. When you are younger it is less likely that you will develop conditions such as diabetes, abnormal blood pressure, cancer etc., which will influence your premium. The renewal premium gets higher as the policyholder moves to a higher age band with pre-existing medical conditions taken into consideration. This increase also depend on the initial premium that you started with. Younger people can get better deals in terms of premium and are charged less on medical insurance premium as health companies consider them less likely to fall sick and get admitted to a hospital.
- It is more profitable to select a long term medical Insurance: You have to pay less premium for long term health Insurance plan which has a tenure of 2 to 3 years as compared to the premium of basic health insurance plan with annual terms. Long term medical insurance plans are provided by quite a few health insurance companies for you to compare long term plans and choose the best health insurance according to your convenience. If you are able to pay the premium for a term of 2-3 years at a time it is thus more profitable to opt for the long term insurance plans.
- Family floater health insurance plans are more beneficial: Including your spouse or dependent kids in your health insurance policy can help you get a reduction in premium rates by 10% to 20%. The overall cost is divided among all insured family members and you would be considered under the umbrella coverage of the family floater plan.
- Buying Online: Buying the health insurance online can help you to reduce the premium as there are no middlemen involved and also you can compare the offers of various companies conveniently. The agent’s fee can be very steep sometimes and there is no way to evaluate the fee based on any parameters related to your insurance. It is best to avoid such excess expenditures and buy it directly from some reliable website or the official website of the company itself.
