Medical Emergency – What Are Your Last Minute Funding Options?

Whenever a medical emergency arises, the top priority remains getting yourself or your loved one treated without wasting time, and finances can be sorted out once the family is out of the trauma. If the person is the breadwinner of a family, it becomes difficult for other members to manage without access to funds. There are situations where many of your reliable options will prove to be unnecessary.

Here is how you should handle such a scenario if it ever arises.

Health insurance may be of limited help

Medicare plans help you cope with the majority of these incidents, although they do not come without a long list of exceptions. Even when you have a health plan, it’s not always a rock-solid funding guarantee. What if the emergency requires you to go to a hospital where the cashless service is not working? What if you visit a network hospital but your cashless pre-authorization request is rejected. What if the illness is on the exclusion list of your health insurance policy or if the emergency occurs during the waiting period for pre-existing illnesses? Even when the illness is covered in a cashless hospital, what if the coverage itself is not sufficient? There are many conditions in which a health insurance policy doesn’t help much.

Most individual or family floating plans have a waiting period for pregnancy coverage, so if the pregnancy occurs before that, it is not covered. Treatment of pregnancy and any timely emergencies like cesarean section are usually not covered by health insurance. It may not cover many other medical conditions such as hernia, cataract, gallbladder stone removal, tartar disease, hydrocele, joint replacement, sinusitis, fibromyoma, hypertrophy benign prostate, hemorrhoids, fistula in the anus. Abortion is still under debate, whether to approve it legally or not, it is therefore excluded from the health insurance package.

Most health insurance plans do not cover dental care, except in the event of an accident. If you want to opt for refractive error correction treatment, your policy is more likely not to cover it. Likewise, if you or a member of your family need hearing loss correction, you will need to do it out of pocket. Besides the cost of treatment, there are many other expenses that are usually not covered by most health insurance policies. The diagnostic costs to identify the presence of illnesses carried out in hospital or in a retirement home are generally not covered by medical insurance.

Having medical insurance is limited to a few, and a majority of Indians still do not have medical coverage and are totally dependent on their funds to face any medical emergency. However, the cost of the treatment does not depend on your affordability. In addition, not everyone has a surplus or savings readily available to meet the financial demands resulting from medical emergencies in the family. So what if you need immediate emergency funds for medical treatment, either for yourself or for your family members?

What is the use of credit cards

When it comes to meeting emergency financing needs, a credit card saves you the day. If the cost is within your affordability range, you may well be able to pay it off by the next billing cycle. In case the amount is large, you can convert the contributions to IME if the interest charged is reasonable. However, if the interest rate and processing fees charged by your credit card are higher, you can use the free credit period to find a low cost loan option. If you have an outstanding home loan, you can get a lower cost top-up loan to pay off credit card charges. Otherwise, you can take out a secured loan against a property or a loan against FD or a loan against other financial securities at lower interest rates. If these options don’t work, you can go for a personal loan, which can be at a much cheaper interest rate than the EMI credit card option.

The problem that many can face despite having a credit card is when they don’t have a sufficient credit limit. In such cases, they will run out of funds despite their credit card. So many don’t have a credit card. What should they do if they are faced with such a need for emergency medical funding?

New era fintech solutions

Nowadays, many fintechs offer instant loan facility. If you’re digitally savvy, you can access finance from fintech companies. Download their app or visit their websites and share KYC details. Then authenticate your identity and allow them to deduce the EMIs digitally. Unless you have a bad credit history, there is a greater likelihood that you will get a loan.

For example, a start-up, CareCover, offers loans for a medical emergency. It offers pre-approved loan cards to cover all OPD and day surgeries. The limit for cards ranges from Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh. Its automated system sanctions medical loans in 5 minutes and transfers them to a hospital bank account within 12 working hours. “We provide 12 month loans at 0% interest rate with no hidden charges. Interest is only charged if the applicant is undergoing treatment at an off-grid hospital. We have an annual fee for the card, which goes from Rs 999 to Rs 2,499, depending on the number of people covered, ”explains Nivesh Khandelwal, CEO and founder of CareCover.

There is no exclusion list with this card. “Once a card is issued, we do not deny or limit the use of our card at any of our network hospitals. We cover all illnesses and treatments and do not have an exclusion list like traditional health insurance, ”says Khandelwal.

Even if you have a health insurance plan and have a family history of conditions that fall under the category of pre-existing conditions, consider it as an additional funding option. “Annual membership fees are affordable. The card can cover up to four family members and the price of the card differs depending on the number of family members covered. The card can be purchased in addition to your health insurance, ”adds Khandelwal.

To read also: Is your mutual health insurance exhausted? A medical loan can help