Is employer-sponsored health insurance sufficient?

If you are covered under the group health insurance scheme of your employer, should you go for individual health insurance cover too? This is a question that dogs the minds of many an employee and, more often than not, the employees simply do not take any individual health insurance cover, assuming that the group health insurance scheme of the employer will take care of all their and their families’ health insurance needs. But is it so? Let’s find out.

The group health insurance scheme of the employer may provide limited coverage in terms of types of illnesses covered as well as the number of dependents covered. As a result, the employer’s scheme may not provide insurance cover for all the diseases and all the dependents, due to which the employee may have to bear the cost of treatment of the diseases or dependents not covered by the employer’s scheme.

Also, the employer’s scheme may provide insufficient cover to the insured and his/her dependents, due to which if the expenses incurred on the treatment of the illness exceed the maximum limit of the insurance cover, the employee will have to bear the cost of treatment beyond the limit of the insurance coverage granted by the employer’s scheme.

The employer’s health insurance scheme provides cover to the employee as long as he/she is in the employment of the company, so the day the employee resigns from the service of the company or his/her services are terminated by the company, the insurance cover ceases to exist.

Considering all the above factors, it is always prudent to have an individual health insurance policy that supplements the cover provided by the employer-sponsored group health insurance policy.