A health insurance policy offers much-needed financial back-up during medical emergencies and planned procedures. However, the increasing cost of this insurance product is a cause of concern among existing and prospective policyholders. Moreover, if you get diagnosed with a lifestyle disease, such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, or asthma, the insurer will charge higher premiums to cover associated risks. Therefore, an important way to keep your health insurance premiums affordable is by following healthy lifestyle habits and staying away from the risk factors.
The cost of health insurance plans depends on various factors, including your age, current health, lifestyle habits, and family history of ailments. If you are young, healthy and follow healthy lifestyle habits, the premium of your healthcare plan will be on the affordable side. However, if your job or lifestyle makes you prone to lifestyle diseases, the insurer will charge higher premiums to cover the risks. Read on to learn how lifestyle diseases affect health insurance premiums. We will also share tips that can ease your premium liabilities.
What are lifestyle diseases?
Lifestyle diseases are conditions that happen due to certain lifestyle behaviours, such as unhealthy diet, low physical activity, and smoking. Prolonged exposure to these lifestyle behaviours can adversely impact your overall health and well-being and increase the risk of certain lifestyle diseases, such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, metabolic disorders, obesity, and more.
If you are wondering why insurance companies increase policy premiums for individuals diagnosed with lifestyle diseases, the following are some reasons:
- Lifestyle diseases may require long-term and expensive treatments. Therefore, they increase the liabilities of insurance companies.
- They can affect your overall health and increase the risk of other conditions as well. For example, diabetes can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, cataracts, and other conditions.
Keeping these factors in mind, insurance companies charge higher premiums from policyholders with unhealthy lifestyle habits and lifestyle diseases. The higher premiums help them cover the associated risks and reduce their liabilities.
Factors that increase the risk of being diagnosed with lifestyle diseases
The following factors can affect your overall well-being and increase the risk of lifestyle diseases.
- Smoking: Smoking tobacco can affect the tissues and organs in your body and increase the risk of lifestyle diseases, including stroke, heart disease, and lung cancer. Studies have shown that smoking tobacco enhances the risk of CAD (i.e., coronary artery disease) and stroke by 2-4 times and lung cancer by about 25 times. Since smoking affects your overall health, it is bound to increase your healthcare expenses.
- Drinking alcohol: Drinking too much alcohol increases the risk of non-communicable diseases, such as cardiac ailments, liver disease, and different types of cancer. It can also affect your mental as well as emotional well-being and lead to anxiety and depression. Keeping the harmful effects of alcohol in mind, insurance companies increase health insurance premiums for people with regular drinking habits.
- Unhealthy diet: Consuming processed foods regularly can increase your risk of cardiovascular diseases, gastrointestinal conditions, obesity, and certain types of cancer. These foods are high in salt and unhealthy fats and low in nutrition. Therefore, excessive consumption of processed foods can lead to nutrient deficiencies in your body and associated health issues.
- Sedentary lifestyle: Having a sedentary or inactive lifestyle can increase the risk of many chronic conditions, such as obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, stroke, osteoporosis, and certain types of cancers. Moreover, it can also affect your emotional health and increase feelings of anxiety and depression. Lack of activity also affects immune system function and blood circulation in the body. It may lead to inflammation, hormonal imbalance, weaker bones, low muscle strength and endurance, and other long-term health conditions.
- Stress: Stress can affect your physical as well as emotional health and cause severe health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, obesity, diabetes, and digestive issues. For example, if you have a stressful job, you are more likely to suffer from stress-related health issues. Therefore, it is important to look for ways to calm your mind and manage stress effectively with simple techniques, such as yoga and meditation. Good health will enhance your quality of life and save you from paying high health insurance premiums.
Tips to reduce health insurance premiums
The following are some tips that can help reduce the risk of lifestyle diseases and save you from paying high health insurance premiums —
- Consume a healthy diet: Consume a wholesome diet comprising fruits, vegetables, whole grains, protein, and healthy fats. These foods will provide important nutrients to your body and prevent deficiencies and associated health issues. You must also limit the consumption of oily foods, choose healthy snacks over junk foods, and stay hydrated. A healthy diet will promote your overall health and help you avail of health insurance at affordable premiums.
- Keep your weight in check: Being overweight/obese enhances the risk of many health issues like diabetes mellitus, heart disease, sleep apnoea, and cancer. Therefore, if you tend to put on weight easily, manage it with a low-calorie and fat-free diet. Staying active and including a workout regimen in your routine can also help. Keeping your weight in check can also prevent unwanted hikes in health insurance premiums.
- Stay active: This is important to boost immunity and support the healthy functioning of the organs in your body. A simple way to stay active is by doing chores around the house every day. Besides this, it is important to exercise or engage in any other kind of physical activity for at least 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. You can join a gymnasium, play a sport, or go for a jog or walk. Staying active improves stamina, burns calories, and prevents excessive weight gain. It can promote your overall health and keep your health insurance plan affordable.
- Stay away from alcohol and tobacco: Drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco can harm your health in many ways and increase the risk of certain life-threatening conditions, including cancer. Therefore, steer clear of these habits to prevent lifestyle diseases and health insurance premium hikes.
- Get restful sleep at night: Good sleep is important for your mental and physical health. Studies have shown that good sleep helps your brain and body to repair, restore, and re-energise. Therefore, lack of restful sleep can affect your overall health and increase the incidence of lifestyle diseases. So, make sure you sleep well for good health and low health insurance premiums.
- Use technology wisely: Excessive use of technology can negatively impact not only your physical but also your mental and emotional well-being. It can also strain your eyes, increase stress levels, and cause sleep deprivation. Hence, it is important to use technology mindfully to avoid associated health issues and high health insurance premiums.
- Opt for preventive health check-ups: Preventive health check-ups are important to diagnose health issues early and make their treatment and recovery easier. Early diagnoses of a health condition and its timely treatment can help reduce hospital bills and health insurance premiums. Moreover, these check-ups can also help detect potential health problems so you can take suitable measures to prevent them. Preventive health check-ups are particularly important for people with a family history of health conditions.
Other factors that can reduce health insurance premiums
The following are additional factors that can help reduce your health insurance premiums and ease your financial liabilities.
- Choose the sum insured wisely: While a high sum insured will increase policy premiums, a low one may not be adequate to cover your medical bills. Therefore, when buying health insurance, consider your health, finances, and policy premiums and choose an amount that will be easy on your pocket.
- Copayment and deductibles: If you are young and healthy, you can buy health insurance with copayments and deductibles. These health insurance clauses can help reduce policy premiums by a significant amount. However, they increase your out-of-pocket expenses when you file health insurance claims, so make sure you choose them wisely. For example, if you file a claim for INR 2 lakhs and your health plan has a copayment of 10%, you must pay INR 20,000 from your pocket, and the insurer will pay the remaining amount of INR 1.8 lakhs.
- Choose a family floater: If you are looking to buy a healthcare plan for yourself and your loved ones, choosing a family floater over individual health plans can help reduce policy premiums. A family floater will cover you, your spouse, dependent children, and parents under one plan. This will save you from managing different health plans and paying higher policy premiums. However, if your parents are above 60, it is advisable to cover them under health insurance for senior citizens to keep the premiums of your family floater affordable.
- No-claim bonus: Choose a health plan with the no-claim bonus option. This means that if you don’t make any health insurance claims during a policy term, the insurer will offer a no-claim bonus. This bonus can help reduce your health insurance premiums and associated financial liabilities. The no-claim bonus is cumulative; you can earn up to 50% of this bonus if you don’t make claims for 5 consecutive policy years.
- Tax deductions: Under Section 80D of the Income Tax Act 1961, you can enjoy a tax rebate of up to INR 25,000 on the premiums you pay towards your healthcare policy. If you are a senior citizen, you can claim a refund of up to INR 50,000. Therefore, if you are a taxpayer in India, you can claim these deductions and ease your financial liabilities.
Conclusion
Lifestyle diseases are conditions that happen due to unhealthy lifestyle habits. Therefore, making some simple yet important changes to your lifestyle can help promote your overall well-being and reduce the risk of lifestyle diseases. Moreover, when you follow healthy lifestyle habits, the premiums of your health insurance plan will be on the affordable side.
Disclaimer: The above information is for illustrative purposes only. For more details, please refer to the policy wording and prospectus before concluding the sales.
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