The state of an individual’s complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity describes the word health. To maintain a healthy lifestyle, you need to eat healthy foods in the right proportion, right time, and manner of feeding. You may also have to go for weekly medical checkup to know the state of your body physiology. Treatment will be required in cases of any disease discovery from your body.
Maintenance of a healthy lifestyle is very necessary in our lives its quiet expensive especially when you are diagnosed of a disease that affect the most vital organs of your body.
To avoid a situation whereby you are unable to do medical checkup or treat yourself when you are sick, there is a great need to find a means or backup plan that will provide for you the necessary financial requirements to maintaining your health status hence the need for a health insurance policy.
Insurance in general serves the function of protecting an individual, a family, or a company from perils or unexpected damages. Such damages which may result from natural disasters like fire, flood, electrocution, disease, drought, etc causes harm to our properties and are in some cases life threatening.
Insurance is created to guarantee you of any loss you may encounter within you, your place of work, or elsewhere. The insurance company is commonly called the insurer, while the individual acquiring the services is referred to as the insured or policyholder.
Health insurance is one of the largest and most important type of insurance, it is commonly offered by many companies across different countries. It can simply be described as a form of insurance that financially covers its beneficiaries (the insured) from hospital bills or expenses they make for a better health.
Once you have acquired a health insurance premium plan, any health challenge you experience will be financially sponsored by the insurance company you partner with.
The agreement to financially sponsor an insured’s health challenge is governed by a policy. To enjoy such privileges as an individual you need to buy a premium for a desired period of time. During this period, accidents, body injury, medical checkups, surgery, diagnoses, drug administration, or any disease treatment you undergo will be paid for by the insurer or the insurance company.
However, different premium rates have different coverages, the higher the premium rate, the wider the coverage. Although most large insurance companies are kind enough to consider their customers and offer cheaper premium rates especially if you as a customer wants to buy multiple coverages, or purchase a joint coverage (i.e. buying a premium for you and u and your spouse).
Some health insurance companies employ a network of medical practitioners that treat or examine guaranteed patients when their services are needed. While some companies link up with health workers in a hospital to deliver customer services. There are also other special health insurance plans called copays that allows the insured to meet up with a medical doctor. Copays also add to cost of premiums
Health insurance premiums can be paid for out of pocket or by directly buying the premium from the healthcare service provider (reimbursement). Recently, some workers in any organization enjoy free healthcare services as members of that organization.
Types Of Health Insurance Policy
You need to know the types of health insurance premiums available so as to enable you know what is covered and what is not covered under a particular policy, and also know the available companies offering premiums for such policies. There are basically two types of health insurance, the private and public insurance policies
Private Insurance
As the name implies this type of health insurance purchased by a single individual. It is the most commonly required type of health insurance whereby an individual singlehandedly purchase a premium for himself and\or his family.
Private health insurance plans cover surgical operations, pre and post medical services. To buy a private health insurance plan, the insurer or the company offering such a plan will have to assess the individual’s age (hence older adults tend to get ill more often than younger people) and medical history of the individual to be insured.
You will be charged higher premium rate if you want to buy a private health insurance plan and you have a pre-existing disease e.g. a diabetic or asthma patient will be charged higher premium rate than someone without any pre-existing disease.
Public Health Insurance
It is purchased by organization s for the benefits of their workers (and their family). Although public health insurance coverage may or may not guarantee or cover many health services like those of a private insurance plan depending on the company’s financial strength.
There are other types of health insurance plans such as Critical illness insurance plan and Hospital Daily Cash plan.
Critical illness Insurance Plan
In this case, the insured pays higher because it involves more intense or severe illnesses such as cancers, organ transplant, surgery, kidney disorders, stroke, heart diseases etc. Also, the premium rate is determined by pre-existing medical condition or health history.
Hospital Daily Cash plan
This type of health insurance plan is also purchased by a single individual like the private health insurance plan. Here, there is no insurance policy governing such coverage. The individual is charged daily for medical services.
This plan is commonly purchased by individuals who are “not sure” about buying premiums or who have irregular medical healthcare. There is no fixed amount, the individual pays according the service rendered to them.
List of Best Health Insurance Companies in Nigeria
We have selected the best companies offering health insurance, our ranking is based on their respective market values and size, duration of operation and trust worthiness. Most of these companies are known not just for health insurance alone but also for other types of insurance like life and homeowner insurance, they include:
- AXA Mansard Health insurance
- Leadway Health
- Clearline
- HCL
- Hygeia
- Great Nigeria Insurance plc
- Regenix Healthcare services limited
- Ronsberger Nigeria Ltd
- Songhai Health Trust limited
- Wellness Healthcare limited
- Ark insurance Group
- Health stead
- Oceanic Health Management Ltd
- Paramount Healthcare services
- UNIC Health Special Services
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