Becoming a senior citizen brings a lot of perks with it. For starters, you can finally take a break and relax without having to worry. You can enjoy and relish your hard-earned savings and spend time with your loved ones. However, there is a different side to being a senior citizen, which can take a toll on you and your finances. It is no secret, that health ailments increase with the increase in age and if you are not prepared, it can wipe a decent chunk of your savings.
This is exactly where a senior citizen health insurance comes into play. Having a health insurance plan during your post-retirement days will ensure that you are not too worried about medical expenses that constantly grow. In most cases, there is no steady flow of income while you are in the retirement phase, making it a little bit more difficult to manage your medical expenses.
Senior Citizen Health Insurance
A senior citizen health insurance refers to health insurance plans available for people older than 61 years. And these health insurance plans are designed to take care of medical expenses. You can buy a Mediclaim policy for parents or yourself if you are a senior citizen. Following are some reasons, you should not hesitate to buy health insurance plans.
- An increase in age brings the possibility of a lot of illnesses. A higher possibility means that you might have to visit hospitals more often than when you were young
- A medical condition can set back the finances of a family quite steeply. If you have a senior citizen in your family and there is no health insurance plan for them, you will end up taking additional stress and burden for medical expenses
- Health insurance plans ensure that you can relax during your retirement phase and not constantly worry about rising medical expenses.
Coverages
A senior citizen health insurance plan offers the following coverages-
Hospitalization - There are various expenses under this head that a health plan usually covers. Expenses such as room rent, medicines, treatment, consultation, nursing expenses, etc.
Health Checkup - Health insurance plans for senior citizens usually do not require any health checkup, unless ex explicitly asked for by your insurer.
Sum Assured - Read the coverages and sum assured so that most of the medical conditions are well taken care of.
Cashless Hospitalization - One of the biggest perks of having health insurance is cashless service. You can avail of cashless medical services across network hospitals. In simple words, you can get the treatment done without paying any money from your pockets and get it cleared by the insurance company directly later on.
Daycare - Technological advancements in the field of medicines mean that some of the procedures do not take as long as they used to. Some treatments do not necessitate 24 hours hospitalization and you get a discharge within/before 24 hours.
Pre-existing Diseases - In normal health insurance plans, the waiting period for pre-existing diseases can be long, up to 3 or 4 years in certain cases. However, a senior citizen health insurance plan has a much lower waiting period of usually 1 to 2 years*.
*varies from insurer to insurer
Lifelong Renewal - The lifelong renewal option in your health plan ensures that you never run out of health coverage. This makes it a point to offer you coverage even if you are 90 years old. (varies from insurer to insurer).
Co-pay - Most senior citizen health plans comes with co-pay feature. This means, the policy holder has to bear some percentage of the total expenses and insurance company will bear the remaining.
Tax Benefits - Premiums paid towards senior citizen health insurance plans are tax deductible under Section 80D. The upper limit of the deduction stands at INR 50,000. Thus, paying for a health plan can help you save taxes as well.
The lack of a health insurance plan for senior citizens can hurt the finances of a family greatly. Buying the right plan will not only ensure that you don’t have to worry about yourself of senior members of the family.