Planning For The Best Medical Attention

Humans have not yet found the way to ensure immortality, but the advancements of modern medicine are such that , much of our life expectancy , and the quality of curative and palliative care we receive ,and ultimately our quality of life depends on what medical care we can afford and negotiate to receive.

Here’s how I’d recommend you go about putting in place the system to ensure that you get the best medical care of your choice. So that you are not constrained for lack of money or forced by insurers to pursue treatments that insurers rather than you would prefer.

First take an inventory of your own body, medical history, personal habits, lifestyle and environment to check if you are predisposing yourself to certain diseases. Then take an inventory of the diseases that other members of your family are having to live with or that they have finally succumbed to. These and related diseases are those you yourself are most likely to have to deal with.

Then do a survey of what medical facilities are available in your immediate neighbourhood. Then decide how far you might be willing to travel for medical help. Check to see if potential caregivers in the family are on the same page as you. Also check to see if your preferred medical practitioners are willing to travel to treat you at the place of your choice. The line of treatment, place of treatment, having doctors you get along with and supportive family and friends influences much of your experience as a patient.

Next sit down with a doctor you trust or hospital administrator and get an estimate of how much it takes to get medical assistance for simple conditions ranging from cataracts, root canals, to broken bones, childbirth to treating malaria, typhoid, jaundice and more serious diseases such as heart problems, cancer etc.

Most health insurance plans will not cover eye and dental treatments, cosmetic procedures ,childbirth and fertility treatments. The simplest way to provide for these treatments that you may or ultimately may not need in future is to build a small corpus that you can use as per your need, though there are a few plans that cover eye and dental procedures. Some plans targeting women provide for 1-2 delivery expenses, with a lot of conditions. They even cover some conditions such as Down’s Syndrome in newborns. Additionally, some companies provide eye care reimbursement for their elderly shareholders. As per your perception of need, choose whatever option works best for you.

Then plan for treating diseases such as jaundice, typhoid, malaria etc. that might require a hospital stay if you catch them really bad. And accidents. Mediclaim plans are suited for this sort of treatment. Decided if you wish for cashless treatment or if you are ok with reimbursements. If you prefer cashless treatment, check to see which companies, if any, offer cashless treatment in the hospital of your choice. Remember that in case of accidents, the nearest hospital may not be your preferred one. With all this information in hand, work out how much money you should have in near cash deposits to draw upon as and when you need it in an emergency. Also instead of insuring yourself individually, you can prefer a family floater plan. But do not forget that more that one person might be in hospital at the same time, say in case of a car accident while traveling with family.

Then come to providing for the more serious diseases such as heart problems, strokes, cancer, renal failure etc. For such treatments critical care plans are your best bet. They offer you a lumpsum on diagnosis of select diseases and you can decide how best to use the money. By combining the more expensive mediclaim plans with critical illness plans, you can ensure economy without compromising on higher covers you might need in case of really serious illnesses. Critical illness policies mostly were good for one time pay-outs. So unless you had more than one policy you were in a jam if you contracted more than one serious illness in your life time. However, plans such as Edelweiss Tokio Life CritiCare+ offer a multi-claim option. However, the Edelweiss Tokio Life CritiCare+ plan covers only 17 critical illnesses and some others offer covers against more diseases, as many as 34.So depending on your own personal situation pick one or more critical illness insurance plans to cover yourself against the treatment costs of different critical illnesses. As critical illness plans come in stand alone and rider options, you can combine some of your legacy planning and health insurance needs by clubbing together some life insurance and critical illness riders. The limited payouts from these critical-illness riders can be used to provision against some of the more unlikely critical illnesses. After all its highly unlikely that you will suffer every disease known to man in your lifetime !

Planning for health care expenses done, insurance purchased, arrangements for timely premium payments made, eat healthy, sleep well, exercise sensibly ,avoid needless stress and go live life well.

I am writing this review for BlogAdda.