Individual Health Plans Or Family Health Insurance? Which One Should You Pick?

Posted by amrina alshaikh on December 27th, 2019

A health insurance plan is must for you whether you are married or single. For a family, there is a family health insurance plan. Health insurance you must have and it will be one of your goals in life because life is uncertain. You never know when you or any of your near and dear ones will need medical care. At the same time, you ought to decide between individual health insurance or family health insurance. Both of these are indemnity plans that are the medical expenses are borne by the insurer during the total. The maximum amount is the sum assured.

Sum assured in health insurance is the maximum amount that you can claim which will be settled by the insurer. There may be multiple hospitalizations and every time the money spent by the insurer will be paid within sum assured. The coverage period is generally of one year.

We should understand the similarity or difference between individual and family insurance plans. An individual health insurance plan is bought in the name of the person who would be insured. These individuals could be spouses, children and also parents. Whenever The family member of a family needs hospitalization, reimbursement or cashless hospitalization, the sum assured for that family member will be utilized. Sum assured of other members remain as it is.

Family floater health plan is different. There is one policy covering the entire family and sum assured can be used by any or all in the family. Total premium for family floater insurance is relatively much lower than Health sum of individual the for all the members. This plan can be bought by the proposer along with spouse, children and parents.

It is advised that if you have small or growing up kids, and if there is no history of any pre-existing chronic disease in the family, you should have a family floater policy. If there is a history of chronic health problem with any of the members, it is better to have individual hospitalization for him or her. It is so because once the member with a chronic ailment requiring frequent hospitalization claims the payments for hospitalization or medical care, the payments will be made from the sum assured for the entire family. The corpus of fund of insurance will exhaust sooner.

So, a family health plan is an extension of an individual insurance plan. It is better to have a family floater insurance for spouses and children but if there are ageing parents, they should be bought individual health insurance policies separate from a family floater.