How To Ensure A Sufficient Health Cover In Your Retirement Period

Despite having a big corpus, you may still fall short of getting a financially stable retirement life if you don’t have any health policy or if you have inadequate health insurance coverage. In old age, medical expenses increase, and the chances of hospitalisation also rise. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that your health policy is updated and adequate to cover all types of medical expenses without compromising your retirement corpus. Now, let’s find out some important steps that you should take to make sure that you have sufficient health coverage in your retirement period.

Increase Health Insurance Coverage At Regular Intervals

Health insurance requirements change with age, health conditions, and medical inflation. So, suppose you have a health insurance policy of around Rs 10 lakh, which is adequate for you at the age of 30 years, then it may not look adequate when you reach the age of 45 years and then later at the age of 60 years and so on. So, you need to keep enhancing the size of the health coverage from time to time. For example, depending on the prevailing inflation rate and your health condition, you may enhance the policy size from Rs 10 lakh in 30 years to Rs 20 lakh when you reach 45 years and Rs 50 lakh before you retire. It gets more and more difficult to increase the policy size as you get closer to retirement. So, try to get sufficient health coverage before you retire.

Beware Of Health Condition And Adjust Health Cover Size Accordingly

If you are at risk of getting a hereditary ailment, such as related to diabetes, blood pressure (BP), or cardiac problems, then don’t wait for retirement to enhance your policy size; do it at an early age when you are healthy and fit. After having an ailment, it becomes difficult to increase health coverage, and even if the insurer increases the coverage, they may levy a loading on the premium towards the pre-existing health issue. So, you should get the insurance cover of an adequate size when you are fit and healthy.

Get A Super Top-Up Health Policy Before Retirement

As you grow older, the premium on your health policy increases. So, after retirement, your health policy may get more and more costly. To ensure that you are adequately covered in your health policy and keep the premium lower, you can buy a super-top-up health policy with a deductible equal to the size of your base policy. Usually, health insurance companies allow a super-top-up policy till the age of 65 years and up to 70 years in some cases and allow renewal for as long as the insured lives.

Finally

When you check whether your health policy is adequate or not for your retirement, you should also consider other factors apart from the premium and cover size, such as, requirement of a particular rider in your retirement, tie-up of insurer with a hospital near your home, etc.

The author is an independent financial journalist.