Don't Let The Health Service Kill You by Jimmy Smyth. ££ As many as 30, people die as a result of medical errors every year.
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If it s not then do something about it right now. Excalibur Press are delighted to be distributors of this product for author Jimmy Smyth.
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Journalist specialising in showbiz, entertainment, business, trade, human interest and lifestyle. When she watched Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time in , her life transformed. Overturning her lifestyle completely, not only did she become a pirate in her own right, but also an impersonator of Captain Jack Sparrow. Excalibur Press is a young, dynamic company specialising in media and publishing in Northern Ireland. Tagged in Book , health , Jimmy Smyth. Description Related Products As many as 30, people die as a result of medical errors every year.
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Your shopping cart is empty. Nowadays, most employers provide group insurance cover to their employees. Take it if it is available. There are two reasons why, despite that, you should have an individual mediclaim. The first, of course, is to supplement the amount of cover. The second is to stay covered in between jobs. It is common to go through two or three jobs before you hit 30, so there are likely to be periods when you would not be covered by employer-provided insurance.
At this stage, also ensure that your parents are covered by their own mediclaim plan. While the cover you take might not be too high, there is another reason why it is important to be covered apart from the fact that you never can say for sure when something will strike. You will be buying the cover before you develop any disease. Remember, mediclaims do not cover what insurance companies call 'pre-existing' diseases, that is, those that you are known to be having at the time of taking the cover.
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If you do develop something later, it will be during the time when you are covered and, thus, the cover will be extended to it. While a plain vanilla mediclaim will cover a wide swathe of diseases, it will by no means cover everything. Except for accidental claims, your mediclaim plan gets activated after the first month.
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Certain ailments will not be covered in the first year. These diseases will be covered from the second year if you renew your insurance with the same insurer. Illness hampers your ability to earn, while its treatment pushes up your expenses. This can hit you hard, especially if you have dependents. Besides, as you grow older, your susceptibility to diseases will increase. Your health cover should factor in all these issues.
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Get a mediclaim to cover only medical or accident emergencies. Keep this cover alive so that ailments are not excluded later as pre-existing ones. Also, your cover will keep going up if you make no claims. Don't miss out on group health covers from your employer. Continue with the group health cover from your employer. Increase your cover after reassessing your requirements since the likelihood of falling ill increases with age.
To stretch your cover, buy two plans from two companies. Get cover for your spouse as well. If he or she is employed, make sure your spouse is covered by the employee group insurance, if available, since that might pay for maternity costs. Periodically review your health cover needs.
Get covers for the new family members. Choose the floater option to give a higher cover to everyone in the family. Make sure clauses of the policy aren't different from individual mediclaim.
After 40, build the second line of defence and get critical illness cover. Your responsibilities increase, with your spouse, children and, possibly, your retired parents depending on you. An important reason to buy mediclaim early is that the chances of making a claim are low in the early years. If claims are not made in a particular year, the insurer is likely to either increase the cover or reduce the premium automatically in the next year. So, if you start early, you can benefit from the automatic increase of cover, and bring the overall cost of insurance down. Health cover premiums you pay for insuring yourself, your spouse, your dependent children or dependent parents qualify for tax breaks.
Under Section 80D of the Income Tax Act, a maximum of Rs 15, paid as premium in a financial year is deductible up to Rs 20, for senior citizens. Premiums paid for all health cover plans, including mediclaim from non-life insurance companies or health- related or critical illness riders get the tax benefit. You can get the charges deducted from the fund value of a Ulip towards a health rider attached to it from your insurer at the year-end.
Only individuals who pay premiums from their own sources and through a cheque can get these tax benefits. If a young person buys a mediclaim in the names of his parents, he would not qualify for deduction applicable to senior citizens and would still have the cap at Rs 15, Whether you get married or not, you will still grow older. And with the years, you should keep increasing your cover.
To find out by how much, you should first reassess your medical requirements. If you feel the need, enhance the cover. The glitch is that all insurers have restricted the cover amount to Rs 5 lakh Rs , Cholamandalam MS is perhaps the only insurer that gives you higher covers of Rs 7. So, to stretch the cover, buy two separate plans from two companies. Both the companies will pay the claim equally. For smaller claims, make the lower denomination plan pay for your expenses.
Make sure to disclose this to both the insurers. After you get married, you need to change your health cover to get your spouse insured. By this time, you are likely to have a few years of health cover and no-claim bonuses behind you. If he or she is employed, make sure your spouse is covered by his or her office's employee group insurance, if available.
Remember, group insurance covers also pay for maternity expenses. So, don't miss out on it if it is available. Except for Royal Sundaram, no individual or family mediclaim provides maternity cover.
Even this is under specific circumstances. If your wife isn't working, there's no choice but to foot the maternity bill. Besides, check if your respective employer's group insurance covers the spouse as well. If it does, get that cover too. You also have the choice of taking a floater mediclaim. In a floater, the sum you choose to be insured can be used to cover all the members of the family, or any one of them. For example, if you have bought a Rs 5-lakh cover, either or both the members of the family can use it to the full amount. The premium that one pays is slightly higher than the normal individual mediclaim plan.
Reliance General Insurance, a new entrant in the health segment, has come out with premiums considerably lower than those of other players. You do not need to make any dramatic changes to your insurance cover after the birth of your children. You can add the name of your kid in the floater policy that you already have. Just make sure that the floater plan is no different from a normal mediclaim plan when it comes to inclusion and exclusion of ailments.
Rather than buying individual mediclaims of Rs 1 lakh Rs , for, let's say, four members of your family, it is better to buy a floater of Rs 4 lakh Rs , The probability of all the members of the family falling ill at the same time is remote and in case any family member develops a problem, the higher limit could be put to use.
It is around the age of 40 that many of the lifestyle diseases start rearing their ugly heads. This is the time when you need to build that second wall of defence to cushion yourself from a major financial setback. Aptly called the 'sandwich generation', those in their 40s tend to carry a lot of dependents -- both their family and their parents. So, it is imperative that any illness that you may develop does not break the family budget.
Getting hospitalised for common ailments or sicknesses may not cause much financial distress. What may jolt your finances are illnesses that drain out a lot of money and take time to heal. These usually fall in the critical illness category and there are separate polices to take care of them. A critical illness policy is designed to provide a lump sum payment if one is diagnosed with one of the illnesses covered by the policy. The main difference between a critical illness policy and a mediclaim is that under the critical illness benefit one gets an amount equal to the sum assured, irrespective of the medical expenses incurred to treat the critical illness.
Under a mediclaim, one receives a reimbursement on producing the bills and the amount is limited to the medical expenses incurred. They are often available as a rider with a life insurance policy, but it may not be advisable to take the rider route since the cover amount would be linked to the main policy. Buying it from a non-life insurance company is more useful as it gives the required cover.
Insurance broking company Optima Risk Insurance Services's CEO Rahul Aggarwal says, "Your main policy might end when you invoke the critical illness rider with a life insurance company. Mayank Chauhan, territory manager with Birla SunLife Insurance, says, "We normally do not recommend attaching critical illness riders to Ulip plans to our clients unless the sum assured of the base plan is high. Also, the cost is higher compared to normal mediclaim.
Tata AIG Life Insurance has a unique plan called Health Protector, wherein one can opt for covers for critical illness, cancer, disability, or even hospital cash benefit -- all available under one plan. The next step after buying a critical illness plan for yourself could be to get a critical illness cover for your spouse as well.
Birla SunLife Insurance has women-specific critical illness plans that are worth examining. All those who have a family history of specific diseases may as well take an extra guard. Diabetes is just one of the ailments that are inherited. Changes are happening in insurers' own risk profiles and they are coming forward to at least medically cover the lives of their customers. It covers most forms of the disease and in case cancer is diagnosed, the benefit amount is paid as both early and advanced stages begin.
The rest do not cover it if it is a 'pre-existing' disease, but cover it if you develop diabetes after you have bought the policy.
It covers six critical illnesses -- heart attack, coronary artery bypass surgery, kidney failure, stroke, cancer and major organ transplant. Bajaj Allianz covers all the diseases associated with diabetes under its critical illness policy. Before giving diabetes cover, Bajaj Allianz puts a patient through a medical examination and charges extra over the premium for the critical illness policy. Medical care during this period is becoming one of society's largest and most complex issues.
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Yet, few individuals on the verge of retirement actually plan for it. This is the time when income inflows are static or falling, and illnesses and medical expenses tend to climb.
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The problem is becoming even more complex as life expectancy has gone up to around 65 years. There is also hardly any insurance cover the elderly can buy. Most companies have fixed the maximum entry age at 70 years or less and give cover up to 80 years, provided the plans are renewed religiously. The premiums are high as the likelihood of illness is high. And that, too, becomes a concern at a time when the income is limited.
Varishtha Mediclaim from National Insurance Company is the only policy available to an year-old and is renewable till the age of Other than normal medical insurance, it covers critical illnesses. But the sum assured is fixed at Rs 1 lakh for mediclaim and Rs 2 lakh Rs , for critical illness.
Under Varishtha Mediclaim, pre-existing diseases are covered after a claims-free year. With a product as complex as a mediclaim or critical illness cover, one should never buy on the basis of price alone. Optima's Aggarwal says, "In the last one year or so, there have been restrictive practices in the health insurance industry, with some firms hiking the premiums and even restricting the services.