Shopping For A Hospitalization & Surgical Insurance Policy (Part 1)
(This is 2 parts story of my personal experience in buying a medical insurance, or Hospitalization and Surgical Insurance)
What? You do not have a medical insurance (Hospitalization and Surgical Insurance-HSI)?
Well, I was having the assumption that my 2 critical illness policies are sufficient to protect me form any eventual ‘medical’ events. But may be more to do with the fact that I am growing older, I see a need to get myself a HSI.
Specifically, my plan is to use the critical illness policy for extended out-patient care, and the HSI to cover hospitalization cost.
When I started asking people about their HSI, as expected, most of them don’t know much about what they have bought. They just knew that they are ‘covered’. But what really surprised me was that generally people did not shop around and compare pricing and benefits of the many HSI out there. I begged people do more ‘research’ and price shopping on their new Plasma TV, which costs only a fraction of the HSI policy premium. Think about it!
To be sure, I am not looking for the BEST HSI, but rather one that suites me.
What I am looking for are
- A stand alone policy
- Guaranteed renewability
- Cashless
- Advanced age coverage
Why stand alone policy? I already have both life & critical illness policies and what I need now is just simple plain vanilla HSI. Also, since the medical insurance premium will increase over the year, a stand alone policy would let me know the actual cost of the insurance. There are HSI that only available as raider (add-on to other policy)
Why guaranteed renewability? Because I want to enjoy a continuous coverage irregardless of my medical claims history - that means irregardless how many times I claimed the benefits as long as it is within the annual or life time limit, the insurance company can not rejects my renewal though now they discovered I am such a ‘money lossing’ customer. Not all HSI are renewal guaranteed.
Why cashless? Simple, I neither want to pay any cash nor chasing for the reimbursement later.
Why advanced age coverage? Because I like to think that I have long way to go and I want to have the necessary protections where I am likely need them the most.
So far so good?
But when I started information gathering, I was confounded by a difficult choice and how to make sense of it? The problem is when I am only given a choice of high annual limit vs high life time limit, how should I make my choice (generally high annual limit and high life time limit are mutually exclusive - you can’t have them both)?
…… to be continued