Health Insurance 101

Health Insurance is an insurance cover that caters for medical expenses for clients and their dependents or beneficiaries.

Insurance is a risk management tool that when you purchase it, it gives you protection against future uncertainty that may results in financial losses.

There are several avenues of purchasing health insurance and hence different types of products available in the market for purchase.

Why health Insurance?

The reason behind Health Insurance is to cater for unexpected high medical costs that can lead to financial crisis. Another main reason is health related; Health insurance cover ensures that you can get access to medical services.

Let’s dive into individual health insurance.

These are policies that are purchased by individual, the aim of these policies is to cover their families and themselves. The main features of these policies are that they are custom made according to different clients’ needs and different classes. This means that every person that is working is able up to some extent purchase this tool of protection.

As a client the main features of health insurance cover that should look for are, what does the cover contain? Does it cover inpatient hospitalization? Does it cover outpatient visits, or dental and optical visits? and for a female client does it cover maternity and associated complications in case you are planning to conceive, or you are already expectant?

By looking at the main features of the cover you get an overview of what your benefits will be and what to expect. Then you narrow down to individual benefits based on product brochures. I will advise you as our potential client not to wait for the policy document to learn about limits and sub-limits, what is covered and what is not covered. Request for product brochures, it contains details of cover together with limits and sub-limit of benefits.

After checking the limits, check the benefits waiting period, request for information on the waiting periods and know if you will have to wait before using a certain cover benefit, for instance for general illness our individual cover (J-Care) has a waiting period of 30 days, it is important to be aware of it since even though you get sick before fulfilment of the 30 days waiting period the company will not cover for the liability. Another example will be for pre-existing and chronic illness, the waiting period is one year, that means you will have to wait for one year to enjoy some of the benefits under pre- existing and chronic conditions sub-limit.

When you understand the various things that you are looking for in a cover and you have the information about the waiting periods of the various benefits, then the next step is to find a reliable insurance company that you can purchase cover from. In this case I will recommend Jubilee Health Insurance.

Fill the application form of the product you would like to purchase and provide the required information correctly. An acceptance or a decline letter will be issued. Assuming an acceptance letter is issued, go through it to ascertain that it is capturing what you wanted in the cover. If it covers what you want, then proceed to make payment.

The policy document will be shared to you within a week. Go through the policy

document to understand more about your cover.

N/B: Ensure you receive your policy document and your card for ease of access to medical services across our extensive panel of health providers across the country.