By Garth Bevan
While building your financial portfolio, it’s imperative to have a health insurance plan in place. However, choosing the right insurance plan for yourself or your family is tricky. There’s a great amount of research that goes into the mix. Also, taking your pick from the available individual health insurance plans and family medical insurance plans seems to be exhausting mentally. So, which one do you choose?
Before we make it easier for you to choose between health insurance plans for family and individual health plans, let’s understand the difference between the two.
What is Family Floater Health Insurance?
In the family medical insurance plans, each one of the members of a family will be covered financially under a single health policy. This kind of flexible health plan allows any insured family member to use the assured sum during any medical emergency. However, if the total assured sum is needed for one particular family member, others will not get coverage.
What are Individual Health Insurance Plans?
As the name suggests, an individual health plan is created for one single person. For instance, you can choose such a plan for yourself or any particular family member. And therefore, only the policyholder will be able to use the sum assured in case of any medical emergency. Also, if you are in a high-risk job or have a history of any critical health issues, it would be prudent to have a critical health insurance plan for yourself.
Family Floater or Individual Health Plans: Which One is Better?
It is prudent to be familiar with the advantages of both family floater plans and individual health insurance plans before choosing the right one. Here are a few determining factors to make the right choice –
- Premium Cost – With family floater plans, you can pay one premium for every family member. This way, you can save some bucks as well! But, on the other hand, the premiums would be charged on a per person basis for individual health plans. So, it may be quite expensive.
- Maturity Period – In family floater plans, children are covered mostly until they reach a certain age. So, once they reach a certain age of 18-25 years old, they need to opt for an individual health policy.
- Age – It is significant when defining the premium cost of health insurance. For family floater plans, premiums are calculated on the age of the oldest member included in the plan. So, it would be beneficial for a young family. However, individual critical illness insurance plans would be advisable for a family with senior members with critical health issues.
- Renewability – The insurance policies need to be renewed on a timely basis. However, the renewal is only permitted up to a certain age. So, if you have a senior citizen in your family floater policy, the plan will become unproductive for other members when the senior member reaches the maximum renewal age.
- No Claim Bonus – If you do not file any claim against your health insurance plan, you will get a higher sum assured as a no claim bonus or a lower premium cost. This benefit is particularly reflected in individual health plans where the chances of receiving incentives are greater than in a family floater plan.
Conclusion
If you are confused about the types of health insurance policies available online, you should consider the above-listed factors to choose wisely. For example, a family floater health insurance plan is preferable for young couples or those staying in nuclear families. Individual health insurance plans are a better match for a family with more than one senior member.
