Health Insurance Companies

As the insurance market is bombarded with lots of health insurance companies, it becomes really confusing for the policy-seekers to find out the appropriate one for themselves. There are few parameters on which you can choose the most reliable one for you. These parameters are fixed on the basis of a few factors of health insurance policies from the point of view of a buyer. Selecting the right company is the major task and after that, you can easily choose their health plans according to your convenience and those factors are mentioned below.

Cashless Facility:

Cashless facility denotes the cashless claim settlement which means the medical expenses that are incurred by the insured due to hospitalization or any medical emergency that expenses are directly settled by the company to the hospital. Here, the insured need not to pay the bills. To offer this facility, the insurance companies collaborate with the hospitals that are called the network hospitals and if the insured takes medical treatments in one of the network hospitals of the company, only he/she can avail of this cashless facility. This is a great relief for the insured. So, while selecting a health insurance company, the first and foremost thing that you need to notice is whether that company has a cashless facility.

Network Hospitals:

An insured can avail of the cashless claim facility only if he/she takes medical treatments from one of the network hospitals of the health insurance company. Hence, it is important to go through the list of the network hospitals of the insurer and find out whether there are any within your vicinity. It would be advisable to choose an insurer that has a long list of network hospitals, ideally the preferred ones of yours. So that you can remain well-protected at the time of a medical emergency and you don’t have to travel far in search of a good hospital.

Claim Support:

It is one of the fundamental parameters when it comes to selecting an ideal health insurance company because people buy health insurance policies so that they can have financial support at the time of a medical emergency. So, you should go for only those companies that have a great claim settlement ratio and good customer service. The higher the claim support, the better is the customer service.

The IRDAI annual report issues the data for the percentage of claims settled by the company within 3 months. The higher the data is, the more reliable the company is. In the above-given table, this claim settlement ratio is given as provided by IRDAI. You can refer to that data for selecting your ideal health insurance company.

Market Share:

The term Business Volume denotes the total number of policies that are provided by the insurance company and the premiums collected. Needless to say, an insurance company with a higher business volume refers to the fact that it is trusted by most individuals and also has a larger market share. You can also count it as one of the parameters while choosing a health insurance company.

Solvency Ratio:

A solvency ratio is a key metric used to measure an insurance company’s ability to meet its long-term debt obligations. The higher solvency ratio denotes that the company has a higher proportion of capital related to the risk it has undertaken, which also means that in case of huge claims the company has enough resources to settle the claims of the insured. This is really good for the customers. Hence, if the solvency ratio is higher, for the customers it is good from the perspective of financial stability.

Variety of Plans:

Major and popular health insurance companies come with a wide array of plans. Even some policies can be customized according to the requirement of the policy-seeker. Some plans are specially designed to cater to the needs of a specific group of individuals such as senior citizens, people with heart diseases, cancer patients, young populations, and so on. One needs to go through all the possible options of the plans and then select an ideal one according to his/her convenience. Generally, the insurance companies which have a wide range of plans are preferred by the people and you have lots of options to select from.

Review:

Before choosing any health insurance company, make sure your company holds a good reputation in the market. For this, you need to check the reviews and the ratings of the customers because there you can find the most honest opinions. It is true that those companies which have a wider customer base and collection of good reviews are more trustworthy and reliable.