In the journey of life, ensuring the health and safety of your family takes center stage. Unforeseen medical emergencies can shake the strongest of foundations, not just emotionally, but financially. This is where the role of a Family Health Plan comes into the picture. This article delves into the depths of this insurance gem. Unraveling how family floater health insurance plan saviour of your family, and benefits, and explaining why the family floater plan could be your family’s ultimate savior.
If you are the sole breadwinner of your family, the financial burden grows constantly. Especially with the rising health crisis and global inflation, it becomes crucial to have insurance for emergencies.
In a world where a single hospital visit costs thousands of rupees, a family floater health plan protects your family from mishaps. Therefore, it is important to find a family health plan that fits all your family needs.
What is a Family Health Insurance Plan?
A family floater health plan is a health insurance that covers your whole family. A family floater plan is essential even if you have a personal health policy. With just one plan, you can have comprehensive coverage for your entire family with the help of a Family Floater Health insurance Plan. Know how the Family Floater Health insurance Plan saviour of your family below.
Features of a Family Floater Health Insurance Plan
As the name suggests, a family floater plan is a health plan that covers your entire family under one plan. You can have a sum assured that covers your family by just paying one premium for everyone. Anyone within the family who is a part of the policy can use the sum assured as and when required.
For example, if you have a family health plan with a cover amount worth Rs. 15 lakhs and you have four members of your family under this plan, all of them can use Rs 15 lakhs as the claim.
A family floater health plan generally covers the prime member insured, their kids, and their spouse. However, there are some family health plans that can cover your extended family members as well.
Benefits of a Family Floater Health Insurance Plan
The following are the advantages of a Family Floater Health insurance Plan Saviour of Your Family:
- With the help of a family health plan, one can cover their family with a well-balanced coverage that provides overall safety in case of emergencies. The benefits include coverage of the following things:
- Ambulance fee
- Room charge
- Consultation fee
- Cost of anesthesia
- Surgeon fee
- Medicine costs
- Accidental hospitalization coverage
- Free full body health check-up once or twice a year as per the policy
- One health policy covering all the family members makes it easy to manage and reduces a lot of stress on the prime member.
- A family floater health plan is affordable as compared to an individual health plan.
- A family floater health plan offers coverage to your extended family as well. You can get your parents insured along with your children and spouse. Some policies also extend the coverage to the in-laws.
- The flexibility of a family health plan is most beneficial.
- You can use the big lump sum coverage amount even for one individual if required.
- In case of an unfortunate death of one of the members insured within the policy, the policy continues without any hindrance.
- You can avail of tax benefits from your family health plan under Section 80D of the Indian Income Tax Act.
- Apart from normal tax benefits, you can claim additional tax benefits, amounting to double the general tax savings when you claim for the premium you paid for your parents.
Difference Between a Family Floater Health Plan and an Individual Health Plan
Family floater health plans are more beneficial than individual health plans. Since they provide coverage to the entire family, people prefer it over individual plans. This makes it convenient and easy to adopt. With one premium and one policy, one can get their whole family insured, each with their own coverage amount. This reduces the hassle of maintaining different policies for different members.
Additionally, a family health plan is cheaper when compared to the individual costs of an individual health policy. Another feature that makes the family floater health insurance policy more preferable is its flexibility. With an individual health plan, you can only get coverage for your kids and your spouse in the name of family.
But if you have aging parents and want to include them in your policy, sadly the individual policy cannot accommodate that. But with a family floater health plan, you can cover your parents along with your children and spouse as well.
An Example of How a Family Floater Health Insurance Plan Functions
To make you understand the functioning of the family health plan better, let’s look at the following example.
Mrs. Singh has bought a family floater plan for her family. The coverage amount is Rs. 10 lakhs and covers herself, her two children, and her husband. During the policy term, she got down with Jaundice and was hospitalized due to severe conditions.
The overall bill for the treatment cost around Rs 2 lakhs. After submitting the required documents and proofs, she got this amount reimbursed from her health insurance company.
The amount left from her coverage should be Rs 8 lakhs now, which can be claimed by all four members. In instances where any member claims an amount equal to the sum total of the entire coverage, then the same amount will not be offered to the remaining family members.
Tips for Choosing the Right Family Floater Health Insurance Plan
Like any other investment, one must be super careful before buying their family floater plan as well. Use the following tips to make an informed decision that will help you get the best family health plan.
-
Check the Sum Assured
One should be thoughtful of the coverage while getting a family health plan. Considering the fact that the entire family will share one plan, the coverage should be selected so as to accommodate the needs of as many members as required.
-
Be mindful of the age
One of the key factors that determine the premium amount of any family health plan is the age of the members being insured. The premium increases with an increased age.
Therefore, for old parents, the premium is generally very high. In such cases, it is advised to check the individual healthcare plan costs as they tend to be cheaper in such cases. So you can have a separate plan for your aging parents.
-
Read into the fine lines
There are many minor details that one must not miss out on while buying the family floater plan. Some of them include:
-
Deductibles
It is an amount that you have to pay as a token at the time of claim and the rest of the amount is paid by the insurer.
-
Co-payment
Co-payment means that you’ll have to pay some part of the total amount for the claim at the time of billing. Therefore, make sure to check if there is a co-payment option in the family health plan as it will make a huge difference.
-
Capping Amount
This is another name for the room limit. The capping amount is the amount that your insurer covers for the room in case of hospitalization.
Cautionary for Family Floater Health Insurance Plan
1. Affordability
Although family floater plans are cheaper than individual health plans, there are two scenarios where even a family health plan becomes very expensive. These include-
- If the age of one of the members is higher than the others, the premium increases substantially.
- The policyholder can make their individual policies cheaper by accumulating their no-claim bonus for all the claim-free years.
2. No Claim Year
If one doesn’t put in their claim for a year, they are eligible for a no-claim bonus. This means either the sum assured will increase with no extra premium or the renewal premium will be reduced. The bonus varies between 20 to 50%.
3. Age
As mentioned above, age is a crucial factor when buying any Family Floater Health insurance Plan. Therefore, the younger you start, the better policy and benefits you can get at lower prices.
4. Don’t Rely Entirely on Corporate Health Plans
Corporate health plans are health insurance plans offered by a company to its employees. If you have a corporate plan, ignoring your own health insurance plan is not recommended. Choose a family health plan that covers your requirements and is under your budget too.
5. Serious Illness
If one of your family members has a serious illness, you should buy an individual health plan for them.
6. Children’s Age
The family health plan only covers your children till the age of 18 to 21, so make sure to keep this in mind while deciding the term of the policy.
7. Renewability
Most Family Floater Health insurance Plans are renewable.
Read More: Top 10 Factors Affecting Health Insurance Premium
Conclusion
We all know the importance of family and safeguarding them from all the mishappenings is everyone’s top priority. To take the first step towards this is to have them insured in terms of health. Hope this article is clear on how the family floater health insurance plan saviour of your family helps in just that.
You should get a health care plan that covers them all with good coverage amounts to make sure they are taken care of in case of medical emergencies. This will also help you from shelling out huge amounts in medical bills.
Therefore, for your own as well as your family’s well-being, getting a Family Floater Health insurance Plan Is paramount.
