Health insurance safeguards you from ever-rising healthcare expenses, including in-patient hospitalisation, daycare procedures, OPD treatment, etc. But what if your health insurance does not cover all your medical care requirements? Hence, choosing the best health insurance plan becomes imperative.
However, there are instances when there is a gap between your existing health insurance coverage and the healthcare expenses. Before we delve into how you can manage the health insurance coverage gap, let’s first understand what it means.
What Does the Health Insurance Coverage Gap Mean?
The health insurance coverage gap is the difference between an individual’s existing health insurance coverage and their total health care expenses. The financial impact of the health insurance coverage gap can be massive, including depletion of savings and investments, accumulation of debt, lack of quality medical care, and more.
Now, let’s look at ways to manage your health insurance coverage gap.
How To Manage Health Insurance Coverage Gaps?
Explore Add-On Covers
Some health insurance companies offer add-on covers or optional additional coverage that you can buy to enhance your existing health insurance coverage. These add-on covers may include maternity add-ons cover, critical illness add-ons cover, OPD covers, hospital daily expenses add-on covers, etc. Ensure you opt for add-on covers that fit your healthcare requirements to manage your health insurance coverage gap.
Disease-Specific Health Plans
If your existing health insurance plan does not cover a specific medical condition or illness, you can consider buying a disease-specific health insurance policy. For example, you can get coverage for heart diseases, pre-existing medical conditions, personal accident insurance, etc.
These health policies are designed to offer coverage for specific medical conditions or diseases, providing tailored protection against medical care expenses associated with those ailments.
Short-Term Gap Health Insurance
Short-term or temporary gap health insurance is a type of health policy that provides coverage from one month up to 12 months, helping to bridge gaps in health insurance coverage. You can use this temporary health insurance coverage if you missed your policy renewal or were covered under employer-funded health insurance and recently lost your job. This one-month gap in health insurance coverage can be extremely beneficial.
Gap health insurance plans’ coverage differs depending on the policy and insurance provider you buy it from. To know what’s covered and not covered under a certain policy, you must read the policy limitations and exclusions before you purchase it.
Alternative Coverage
If traditional health insurance coverage does not meet your requirements, you can consider alternative sources of insurance coverage, such as group health insurance through community-based health insurance programs, government-sponsored health schemes, or your employer.
It is important to be proactive in addressing health insurance coverage gaps and ensuring extensive protection against medical emergencies. Understanding your health policy can help you address coverage gaps effectively and ensure peace of mind.
To Wrap It Up
Investing in a health insurance plan is essential to secure yourself financially from exorbitant healthcare expenses. While purchasing a health plan, you must review the policy carefully to understand the policy’s terms and conditions, inclusions and exclusions, etc. And in case your health insurance has coverage gaps, you can use the tips mentioned above.
You can also use an insurance premium calculator to compare Gap health insurance plans’ costs, ensuring you get complete health insurance coverage at an affordable rate.
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