Everyone needs to secure their own and their family's health. With the increasing cost of healthcare in India, buying a health insurance policy has become almost mandatory for everyone. In today’s world of options, people have different choices when it comes to purchasing health insurance. There are various plans readily available in India to include every aspect of a medical emergency. Some popular types of policies are explained below:

• Individual Health Insurance Policy: This type of health insurance provides coverage to an individual against certain illnesses, offering advantages like cashless hospitalisation, reimbursement, coverage of pre-hospitalisation and post-discharge expenses and various add-ons. The entire sum assured is available for only one individual.
• Family Health Plan: With family health plan, you can include your family members under the umbrella of a single health cover. Family floater mediclaim policies offer a fixed sum assured to the family members, which can be availed either by one or all members of a family for one or more claims during the tenure of the policy. Family health plans come are more expensive than an individual health plan
• Senior Citizen Health Insurance: Senior Citizen health insurance is designed particularly for anyone aged above 60 years and offers protection from health issues during old age. According to IRDAI, every health insurance firm must include people up to the age of 65 years in its plans.
• Surgery & Critical Illness Insurance Plans: This plan is usually brought as a standalone policy or as a rider for the treatment of various critical illnesses, such as kidney failure, paralysis, cancer, heart attack etc. As the medication of such illnesses is expensive, the imbursement related to them is also very high. A critical illness is a serious, possibly terminal, disease and is pre-defined by the provider. Most critical illness policies provide a lump-sum benefit if the insured is diagnosed with one or more of the specified terminal conditions.
• Maternity Health Insurance: Medical insurance companies today cover additional costs, including those incurred in both pre and post-natal care, child delivery (normal or caesarean), and sometimes include vaccination of newborn babies in a maternity plan. This insurance covers the newborn baby up to the validity of this policy. It also covers transportation fee for ferrying the mom-to-be to the nearest network hospital of her choice.
• Personal Accident Cover: These personal accident plans are frequently offered as riders. They include hospitalisation and bear the medical outlay in the event of an accident. These are issued as fixed benefit policies, where a specified sum is paid on the occurrence of unforeseen events, such as accidents, which can result in death or disability of the person. However, the payout is not related to the sum assured.
• Pre-Existing Disease Cover: After 2-4 years of policy inception, various policies begin considering pre-existing diseases, e.g. diabetes, hypertension, kidney failure, cancer etc., for claims. Pre-existing disease cover is offered for the policy-specified illness(es) that the insured had before purchasing the policy.
• Preventive Healthcare: Undoubtedly, healthcare is very expensive and nobody wants to fall ill. So, now we have preventive health care that takes care of you before you fall sick. Preventive care, such as regular health check-ups, concession in X-ray fees, consultation fee etc., is offered by this policy. By offering various healthcare provisions, this plan aims at keeping you healthy. Preventive care is a medical care rendered not for a specific complaint but for prevention and early-detection of ailments.
• Unit Linked Health Plan: Unit- Linked Health Plan (ULHP) has been introduced recently, which offers a unique combination of health insurance and investment. Apart from giving health protection, ULHPs also contribute in building a corpus that can be used to meet expenditures which are not covered by health insurance policies.

  Among the ULHPs available in Indian market, ICICI Pru's Health Saver, LIC's Health Protection Plus, Birla Sunlife's Saral Health and IndiaFirst's Money Back Health Insurance Plan are a few big names. By opting for this plan, one can save a certain amount which can later be used to pay for the treatment of any pre-existing illnesses that are not covered by a normal health policy during the waiting period.