Enhance Your Health Insurance Coverage With Top-Ups and Super Top-Ups

Everything changes with time and so do your health insurance needs and priorities. You might have bought the best health policy with a substantial sum assured, but after a couple of years, you may find it insufficient. This could be due to changes in your health condition or simply due to the rising cost of medical care. It is not possible though to keep changing your policies or buying new ones with higher coverage due to the higher costs and complications involved. To help you face this tricky situation, a lot of insurance companies have come up with The top-up Plan and Super Top-up Plans in addition to your existing health insurance plan that proves economically beneficial for you.

Both top-ups and super top-ups come into action after the “threshold” limit of insurance is crossed. The threshold is the maximum limit on your existing policy and only after utilizing that amount completely you can use top-ups or super top-ups.

How does Top-up Plan work?

Let’s take an illustrative model to understand it:

Mr. A has an existing health plan with a sum assured of Rs. 5 lakhs and he gets a top-up cover of Rs. 10 lakhs. In the event of single hospitalization in a year, Mr. A incurs a bill of Rs. 6 lakhs. Now Rs. 5 lakhs will be paid as part of the threshold limit and the remaining Rs. 1 lakh will be paid from the top-up cover out of the total cover of Rs. 10 lakhs.

Imagine another scenario where Mr. A gets hospitalized again in the same year and incurs a bill of Rs. 4 lakhs. Since he has already utilized the entire threshold limit of his health insurance plan in the previous claim, he will have to incur this cost from his own pocket as top-ups work only once a year, and that too over and above the threshold limit!

How does Super Top-up Plan work?

Carrying forward the above example of Mr. A, with a super top-up plan he will be able to pay off the second bill of Rs. 4 lakhs despite his threshold limit being utilized in the first claim. Also, if there is a third claim of Rs. 5 lakhs in the same year, the super top cover can be used to pay it too up to the limit of the health plan. In this case, the limit is fixed at Rs. 10 lakhs. Therefore, a super top cover will cover the entire claim in a given year up to the pre-fixed limit thereby providing adequate financial coverage to the insured.

Given the individual benefits of both the covers, top-up plans attract lower premiums compared to super top-ups. Health insurance policies can be bought with either of the plans depending upon what kind of cover you need and what is your budget.

You have to analyze your medical needs carefully to understand which plan will work the best. If you’re a healthy young person, then having a super top-up might prove to be costly in the long run. In such a case a simple top-up cover shall suffice. However, if you have a history of illnesses and require regular medical attention, a super top-up can go a long way in aiding your financial needs, keeping your overall costs down without compromising on your health cover.

What is a Deductible in Super Top-up/Top-up Plan?

We all are concerned about our health; in such a situation health insurance has become a very important service for people, usually, after buying a health policy, we feel that it is done. However, despite this, many times people find this service less and add top- or super top-up with their insurance. For full coverage, very few people would know that the term deductible is used extensively but what is it?

The word deductible comes into more discussion when you want to avail the benefit of the top-up policy, this amount has to be borne by the policyholder. Deductibles are not covered by health insurance providers. They only pay the amount over and above the deductibles. Basically, the number of deductibles have to be paid by you and the balance amount i.e. additional amount is paid by the insurer to the extent of the sum assured.

Let us try to understand it in an easy way.

Importance of buying Super Top-up and Top-up Plan

Increasing healthcare costs

There is no doubt that the medical field is progressing more than we humans, about 70 years from today, India did not even have a proper hospital in the country and today, the whole of India is full of private hospitals. In today’s time, a person is afraid of going to the hospital and getting treatment despite being ill, the reason is clear that private doctor’s fees are more expensive than necessary and not everyone can afford it and the only treatment is not expensive, medicines are also expensive.

In such a situation, the common man is left with the help of a government hospital and even today in India healthcare is a matter of problem if we talk about government hospitals. Year after year, we do get one complaint or the other, where there is some lapse in health services. Well since then things have become a little easier for people who have come into the midst of health insurance people.

Higher coverage for senior citizens

As a person progresses towards old age, his body becomes weak and in this situation when he needs to be admitted to the hospital, who knows, you never want to let your senior go away and it’s For this, you are ready to pay any amount and perhaps to deal with such a situation, you combine top-up or super top-up plan with the base plan.

Health insurance policies strive to provide you with the right health coverage. It all depends on you how you want to avail yourself of them! Make an informed decision!