5 tips for finding health insurance for kids
In the modern age, raising a child the right way is perhaps more of a complicated task than ever before. To form a well rounded child that is well attuned to the world in which we live, it takes more than just sending them off to school and waiting 18 years. Now people must take steps to educate their child outside of school, sign them up for activities, engage them with new skills, monitor their technology usage, protect them from trauma, and make sure they don’t fall in with the wrong crowd. What’s more, to ensure that our kids have every opportunity to succeed in their adult lives, we have to protect their physical and mental wellbeing in their youth.
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In order to achieve this, when children get sick or injured, parents must be able to take them to the best possible medical facilities to ensure the best possible outcomes. Of course, this oftentimes requires a certain amount of affluence to afford; the type of affluence that not everyone has. Fortunately, medical insurance is available to help ease the potential financial burden that can accompany high quality medical care. So how can we know how to find the best health insurance for chldren? Here, Pacific Prime Dubai digs into the topic with 5 tips for finding great medical insurance for kids.
1. Get the right insurance for kids
The first step towards finding the best health insurance for kids is to identify the benefits that you would like it to contain. To be sure, there are a plethora of different insurance providers in Dubai, and each of them has a variety of different plans and options to choose from. You can get plans that only address the most pressing of medical emergencies with inpatient insurance coverage, or create a more robust plan that includes outpatient medical benefits and much more.
So what are the additional benefits that parents are likely to want for their children? Well, in addition to comprehensive inpatient and outpatient coverage, dental insurance for kids goes a long way to ensuring your child’s ongoing oral health for their entire life. Not only will it be able to cover dental emergencies, but it will also encourage policyholders to schedule regular appointments to make use of the policy.
Additionally, vision insurance is a good idea to avoid any learning problems that may develop in school as a result of poor eyesight.
2. Set appropriate benefit levels
You can obtain all of the insurance benefits mentioned above and still have poor coverage from a poor insurance plan. How is this possible? It’s possible because even though you have a certain level of coverage for the mentioned benefits, that does not mean that the level of coverage provided is enough to fully address your medical costs.
For example, if you have an insurance plan that with an annual maximum benefit limit of AED 150,000 (which is exactly what the Health Insurance Law of Dubai states is the legally allowed minimum), it is entirely possible that a catastrophic accident involving your child could result in medical bills over AED 400,000. If this unthinkable scenario were to occur, the remaining AED 250,000 beyond the limit listed in the plan would be your sole responsibility, and would have to be paid out of pocket.
Clearly, this is far from a desirable outcome, so checking to make sure that the limits on your plan are at a level that you are comfortable with is important.
3. Maximize healthcare options
Everybody likes having options, right? In just about anything we do, we want to have the freedom to choose what we believe to be the best choice for our needs. This is certainly no different when it comes to our children’s healthcare. We want to be able to choose the hospitals that we take them too, as well as the particular doctors that they see. It makes sense, then, to check out the specifics of any health insurance plan before you purchase it to see if there are any provider networks included within.
A provider network is a limited collection of medical facilities and doctors that an insurance provider limits a policyholder to. The insurer does this to control costs, as provider networks lead patients to care providers that insurers know are more affordable. While this does save money for both insurers and the insured, it also limits a parent’s options of where to have their child treated, and can prevent the child from seeing the doctor that is truly best for them.
Under a health insurance policy with a provider network included, patients can still go to providers outside of the network, but the insurance may not pay on any claims made for care. Policyholders can also potentially get approval for coverage for a particular healthcare provider outside of the network, but this is solely up to insurance company to decide in the end.
4. Protect your family everywhere
So say you do get a plan without any limits on which medical facilities or doctors your child can see in Dubai. Will your child then have health insurance coverage everywhere they go? Well, if you’re like most people, the answer is “No.” This is because most health insurance for kids plans are local in nature. In Dubai, this means that health insurance plans are likely to only provider coverage at hospitals in Dubai and/or the greater UAE. This means that if you happen to be outside of the area of coverage on a holiday, visiting family, or any other reason, you will effectively be without medical insurance for kids.
Fortunately for those who travel with their families often, there are international health insurance plans available that provide health insurance benefits in virtually any country around the world. This means that, while abroad, you can rest assured that you will be able to take your child to any hospital, clinic, or doctor’s office for care, and be able to get reimbursed for any costs when you get back home.
Pacific Prime Dubai is a specialist when it comes to international health insurance plans, and can recommend if it is right for you.
5. Get backup
Nobody goes to court without getting a lawyer, or at least a healthy amount of professional legal advice. However, in matters that concern the health and wellbeing of their children, many people are content to go straight to the insurance companies not really knowing much about how insurance plans work.
Trust us, it pays to work with impartial insurance professionals, such as a certified broker like Pacific Prime Dubai, before you purchase your child’s insurance plan.
Now that every person in Dubai – man, woman, and child – must possess health insurance, it’s more important than ever for people to know the ins and outs of it. The insurance advisers at Pacific Prime Dubai will take the time to lead you through the insurance policy purchase, administration, claims, and renewals process, and answer any questions that you might have.
Then, after gathering some of your information, they can present you with a comparison of the plans from top Dubai insurers that are best suited for your specific needs. Armed with this knowledge, as well as a free price quotation, you are free to make an educated decision about the plan you feel is right for your child.
Want to find out more about what Pacific Prime Dubai can do for your family? Contact us today!
Serena earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. As such, she is an avid advocate of mental health and is fascinated by all things psychology (especially if it’s cognitive psychology!).
Her previous work experience includes teaching toddlers to read, writing for a travel/wellness online magazine, and then a business news blog. These combined experiences give her the skills and insights she needs to explain complex ideas in a succinct way. Being the daughter of an immigrant and a traveler herself, she is passionate about educating expats and digital nomads on travel and international health insurance.
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