Want to secure your child’s financial future? Buy child insurance online and get access to the best medical care & preventive care benefits.
Burgeoning inflation has also led to a steep rise in medical costs. Even basic child health care costs have surged beyond comprehension. A life insurance or a child endowment plan will not suffice. They have limited health coverage, which is not enough to manage these increasing expenses. Thus buying child insurance plan at a right time helps your child reap many benefits over the years.
What does children’s health insurance cover?
The broader connotation of child insurance is focussed on covering overall costs involved in raising your child. This could include education insurance or the many endowment plans. However, these financial instruments don’t benefit as health cover in the long run.
Newer policies are now being launched, and these are expected to offer individual coverage to children irrespective of coverage opted by parents.
Ideally, you should consider a child health insurance plan that provides a wholesome and complete coverage for your child. This can be provided by a family floater plan, which is also called a Comprehensive health care plan.
Family floater plans
Family Floater plan is as good as an individual health plan which is extended to cover your entire family. It usually covers individual, spouse and children. People may either consider Mediclaim or Family Floater Plans. Both the options are available to them. However, you must always consider the scope of coverage and not just the premiums while choosing the right plan for your child. Here is the difference between a Mediclaim & a Family floater plan.
Individual Mediclaim vs family floater
Mediclaim or health insurance provides the child with a maximum cover of Rs. 1 Lakh. Any amount post this limit would be paid out of your pocket. Your health benefits here are rather restricted and extend only to the child. Considering that a child health insurance wouldn’t be used as much, premiums are lower. But again, the scope of cover can be restrictive.
A Family Health Insurance covers children & has following benefits-
- Covers child from the 91st day of birth if parents are already in the plan.
- Routine check-ups
- Immunizations
- Doctor visits
- Prescriptions
- Dental and vision care
- Inpatient and Outpatient hospital care
- Laboratory and X-ray services
- Emergency services
How to pick the right plan for your child?
You should do some comparison and review before investing in child health insurance. These points must be considered –
- What does it cover? This comprises of inclusions and exclusions, what are the terms and conditions, waiting period (fixed time before you can make a claim). This will give you a gist of the basic coverage your child would get.
- Also, evaluate the sum assured as per your child’s current and future needs. Hence, it is advised to re-evaluate your policy on every renewal.
- If you have 2 or more kids, think about plans that suffice their health requirements. If an older child is nearing 18, he/ she would soon require an individual cover.
- Check minimum age limit. Most policies cover children only beyond 5 years of age. However, in case you have a floater, children would be covered from 91st day onwards.
- Pick policies that provide maximum renewal ceasing age. This means your policy should be ideally renewable for a lifetime.
- Optimal coverage for treatment.
- Co-payment should be lower from your end (minimum amount that you have to pay from your pocket).
- Most exclusive children’s policies don’t have pre-existing disease clause. However, you should choose one that covers pre-existing diseases.
Compare different plans on the basis of the above factors. The sooner you start with a children’s health insurance plan the better it is for your little one’s future.