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In India, health insurance is mostly restricted for the people who are above the age of 40 years, carry the risk or ailing with some nature of serious diseases or has family & financial responsibilities onto them. But unfortunately, these are some biggest myths that are leaving people in distress in the time of emergencies because other family members such as kids, housewives, teenagers, etc are uninsured.

The ongoing scenario from the last 1.5 years has given enough reasons to opt for a comprehensive family health care insurance plan starting with the Covid-19 outbreak that witnessed entire families struggling with this highly contagious virus. While one family, insured under individual health insurance, was able to get proper treatment on time without breaking any savings. Other family members such as children, senior citizens or housewives who never bothered to get a health insurance plan for themselves seemed helpless because of expensive health care treatments.

And now during the monsoon season that gives birth to various vector-borne diseases especially viral infections and typhoid are also contagious that generally communicate in the entire family, once one family gets infected with it.

Family health insurance plays a critical role when it comes to contagious diseases that have higher chances to circulate within the family. There are several advantages of family health insurance that a family can extract during seasonal infections.

Several family insurance plans cover vector-borne diseases such as viral infection, dengue, malaria, typhoid and etc. An adequate financial cover is assigned to treat such seasonal diseases as per the sum insured and the number of family members. Insured family members can get their diagnostic tests, medical costs, and ambulance services, if required either cashless or reimbursement with the help of a family insurance plan. It helps in getting proper treatment for all infected members without any restriction or worry.

Another benefit offered by family health insurance is the OPD cover. In vector-borne diseases, it is not necessary to get hospitalized but requires regular doctor’s consultation and regular follow-up as the vector-borne diseases may last longer than the usual duration. Thus Out Patient Department i.e. OPD cover keeps the entire treatment for different family members light on the pockets. The inclusion of OPD varies from plan to plan and company to company as in some OPD cover is a part of the main plan but in some, this comes as an optional cover.

OPD department or doctor’s clinic visits are a bit expensive and when more than one family member is sick, then it can be really difficult to manage funds for a long time without insurance.

Moreover, family health insurance plans shell out another biggest advantage for the family. These plans cover kids up to the age of 21 years-25 years that are generally not insured under any individual health insurance plans. And vector-borne and infection-led diseases are quite common amongst kids in a family, thus family health insurance is quite helpful for them as they are delicate and often found with low immunity to fight such infections.

Family health insurance plans reduce the hassle of keeping track of different individual policies especially when there is a huge tension because of multiple family members falling sick together along with a highly manageable premium for families in comparison with individual health insurance plans.

Therefore, having family health insurance payouts several benefits for the entire family during the peak seasons of infection in keeping the surety of health safety of the entire family.
(The author is Founder & CEO, PolicyX.com; views expressed are personal)