Health Insurance As An Investment Option

Unit Linked Health Insurance Plans offer great value bundles of preventive insurance as well as savings schemes which offer a tidy sum on maturity.

ULHP or a Unit Liked Health Plan will offer a great combination of investment and health insurance. Besides providing financial protection for health, they are used to build a base which can be used to look after expenses that are not under any health insurance policy’s scope.

Understanding ULHP’s

The Money Back Health Insurance Plan by IndiaFirts, Saral Health by Birla Sunlife, Health Protection Plus by LIC are some of the Unit Linked Health Plans that are offered in the market. These plans have a good portion of market linked investment plan. The cost of the health cover will depend on many variables like gender, age and other socio economic factors. It is important to understand that that the charges for health insurance will not vary because of the savings part of the premium. It is the customer who has to decide on the premium value that should be set aside for health insurance cover. After ensuring payment for insurance cover, the balance amount of premium after subtraction of charges like policy administration, allocation of premium and management of fund goes straight into a pool of savings money.

Advantages of ULHP

If a person has a standard issue health insurance policy that takes care of hospitalisation expenses, then the person is still in financial risk. There are many health related expenses which occur after discharge, before hospitalization or even when a person is not hospitalised. This is where ULHP comes in very handy as they can financially rescue a person by taking care of additional expense incurred. One can say that an ULHP is the bridge between actual expense incurred and payable amount by insurer.

There are many medical conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, diagnostic screenings (preventive), oral care etc. which are not covered under any health insurance plan. It is wise to keep a savings pool for all these kinds of expenses. If one has invested in ULHP then there is no need to dip into long term savings when a medical emergency occurs.

Usually health insurance plans do not pay for treatment of existing diseases that were present prior to buying the policy or those diseases that occur immediately after buying the policy. If a hospitalisation occurs in the interim waiting period, a mediclaim policy will be unable to pay for it. In case you an ULHP you have the convenient option of withdrawing money from the Corpus.

There are many maturity benefits linked with ULHPs. There is a steadily built pool of savings which can take care of all and sundry health expenses even after policy expires. For those consumers who are unwilling to invest in a purely protective health insurance policy, the ULHP offers a maturity amount where the whole fund value is paid out at the end of the term. Like life insurance, an ULHP plan has the option of amount pay out to the nominee if policy holder dies.

The icing on the cake in case of an ULHP is that if for some reason the annual premium is not paid then the amount will be subtracted from the corpus. The policy continuity is not at risk in case of a default. Usually this benefit is offered to customers after 5 years of purchase of the ULHP.

This article is written by Moupee Deb Roy, content writer for Turtlemint.com. She is a content enthusiast and is determined to encourage people to be informed and buy health insurance.

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