Know How a Top-up Health Insurance Plan Works
A top-up Health Insurance Plan is basically an add-on plan to your regular health insurance plan. The top-up plan provides you an additional cover when you use up your basic cover limit. Unlike your usual health insurance plan, top-up plans accompany a threshold limit and cover an incidence hospitalization. Depending on your present policy limits, you can choose the threshold limit at the time of purchasing a top-up plan. This means a top-up plan will activate and pay back your hospitalization expenses arising out of an illness over and above the threshold limit. Meeting the threshold limit and single incident of hospitalization are two fundamental criteria of a top-up plan. The benefit is that top-up plans with higher threshold limits/deductibles are cheaper.
Types Of Top-up Plans
Two kinds of top-up plans are there:
1. Top-up Plans: A top-up policy is applicable on a per claim basis and comes in only if the claim amount is over the cover of your health insurance policy. For instance, if you have a top-up plan, then you can claim the disparity amount from the top-up plan for that specific claim during hospitalization if the bill amount surpasses the health insurance policy cover.
2. Super Top-up Plans: Super top-up pays the amount if you have exhausted the annual cover provided by your base health policy because of repeated claims. It works at an aggregate level and comes in when you have used your base policy amount. Thus, unlike a top-up plan, there is no threshold at a specific claim level.
Difference Between A Rider And A Top-up Plan
You have to purchase a rider together with your health insurance policy and by adding them you can avail yourself additional benefits with your basic insurance policy. In the case of health insurance, you can add riders, such as maternity benefit, room rent waiver, accidental benefit cover, critical illness cover, etc. Meanwhile, you have to purchase super top-up or top-up plans separately. And, it is used to augment your coverage amount in addition to your basic health insurance policy.
Advantages Of Top-up Policies Over Increasing The Coverage Amount For The Existing Health Insurance Policy
Following are the advantages of top-up policies:
1. Top-up Plans Are More Cost-effective
Buying a top-up plan is much more money-making than increasing the present health insurance plan’s base cover. And this is the primary reason some people prefer to purchase it rather than increase the base cover for the present health insurance plan.
2. Coverage Amount For An Existing Policy Can Be Increased Up To A Limit
If you want to augment the sum assured for your health insurance policy, you can only enhance that to some extent. Each health insurance company verifies up to what limit it will enable its policy owners to augment their coverage amount.But, if you purchase a top-up or a super top-up plan, you can make your mind up what cover amount you want to purchase.
Conclusion
Top-up plans are an outstanding way to augment your health insurance coverage amount. But before purchasing a top-up plan ensure to read the policy papers carefully to understand the term and conditions so that you do not face any trouble during the claim process.
Disclaimer: This article is issued in the general public interest and meant for general information purposes only. Readers are advised not to rely on the contents of the article as conclusive in nature and should research further or consult an expert in this regard.
