Complete your coverage by medical insurance

Q. I am a Central government employee aged 56 years. I am planning to take health insurance. Please suggest a suitable health insurance policy and the premium to be paid monthly. I am prepared to pay ₹1,000 every month towards such insurance.

A. Central government employees have the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) that bears certain defined medical expenses, mostly in government health care facilities and to a certain extent, at private sector facilities.

If you buy a separate health insurance policy you can claim under it in case of hospitalisation in a non-CGHS facility. For expenses over and above what the policy covers, you can approach CGHS. After your retirement, too, you can maintain your CGHS cover by making the requisite payments for coverage.

A basic hospitalisation policy to suit your budget premium would bring you a coverage of only ₹3 lakh or less, depending on your health status. You may be better off with a top-up or super top-up policy with a threshold designed to suit the limits of your CGHS entitlement level and this policy would cost relatively less by way of premium.

You can check various permutations and combinations for coverage, threshold and premium on insurance company websites which usually have a premium calculator.

Insurance for your family should also be a factor of the extent of CGHS coverage available to them.

If they are not sufficiently covered, then please take a basic hospitalisation policy for them, or else, top-up/ super top-up policies would work better. In the basic policy, you can opt for a floater cover where the premium would be less than individual covers, as the same SI is shared by all the insured.