In a country like Nigeria, with a haphazard health care system, everyone should have a health insurance plan. While seeking health insurance, affordability comes to the mind, but several factors affect the cost of health insurance plans. These factors are discussed below.
What determines Health Insurance Costs
- Age: Age is a huge determinant for health insurance cost and premiums. The older a person is, the higher cost of a health insurance plan. This is usually so because of the susceptibility of aged persons to illnesses.
- Past Medical Record: another factor that determines the cost of health insurance costs is one’s previous medical history. A clear medical history will translate to lower premiums. A person with more health-related issues is a higher risk to cover therefore, depending on the specific issue, health insurance may cost may rise.
- Your Occupation: the nature of your job is a deciding factor on the cost of health insurance. A person with high-risk jobs will incur more health insurance premium than low-risk occupations.
- Tenure: The duration of a health insurance plan determines if you’ll get costlier health insurance or not.
- The number of persons covered: While there are individual plans, there are plans that can cater to more than one person. The more people a health insurance plan includes, the higher the cost will get.
- Lifestyle habit: Some lifestyle habits could affect the cost of a health insurance plan. For example, a person who smokes is likely to pay a higher sum for a health insurance plan than a non-smoker would for the same amount of coverage.
- Type of plan: Different kinds of health insurance plans comes with different kind of coverage benefits.
Conclusion
While you may be apprehensive of getting a health insurance plan because of its cost, take note that factors such as age and medical history. They are out of control of an individual. Other factors are controllable and could be worked on if one intends to get a cheaper health insurance plan. However, you shouldn’t let a higher health insurance plan deter you from getting the needed health backup and protection you or your loved one needs.