Do You Have Health Insurance for Tonsillitis?

From fever, common cold and cough to jaundice, tonsillitis, appendicitis- these sicknesses cause pain to young and adult alike. In most cases, you can just follow a prescribed course of medication and take sufficient amount of rest to revive your health. However, in severe cases one might need hospitalization, or even surgery. Tonsillitis is one such condition.

We all have been affected by tonsillitis at least once. Whether it was for a minor weather change or for eating a bucket full of ice-cream is a different matter altogether. Though easily treatable, tonsillitis might require a surgery if the ailment bloats to extreme proportions. Getting a tonsillectomy done to remove one’s inflamed surgery can also be financially troublesome. So how would you pay for the surgery required? Will you draw on your savings or will your health insurance plan provide for the surgery’s costs?

Knowing the Disease

Tonsils are two bean-shaped glands located at the side of our throats. They protect the throat from bacterial and viral infections. Tonsillitis is the inflammation of the tonsils which results due to aggravated bacterial or viral infection in the body. Worse part is that it can spread from person to person with coughing and sneezing. Although tonsillitis can be treated through oral medication of antibiotics, paracetamols etc., a severe case of tonsillitis requires surgery.

Modern lifestyle has reduced our immunity. And the rising air-pollution levels in the environment have made us more prone to diseases like tonsillitis. While this condition often affects younger ones, elderly people are equally prone to this infection whenever there is a change in weather.

Insurance Cover against Tonsillitis

While buying a health plan, we often overlook the exclusion list, which states the diseases beyond the scope of coverage of the plan. We just assume that the cost incurred on all types of hospitalizations will be paid for by our health plans. Now this is a mistake we realize only when our claim is rejected by the insurance company. We ultimately end up blaming the insurer incessantly without reflecting on our folly.

This is not to say that tonsillitis is not covered under health insurance. However, it is covered only after a stipulated waiting period.

There is a waiting period of two years before the condition of tonsillitis is covered under any health insurance plan. This means that you need to renew your health insurance policy in time for at least two years to avail coverage against tonsillitis. This clause is same in almost all health insurance policies available in the market today.

So as a policyholder, if you have a floater plan, make sure to cover your children at the earliest. After all, children are more prone to the disease than adults are. Since you have to wait out the waiting period, delaying the coverage will be outright foolish. Also remember that the waiting period clause applies to individual health insurance as well as family floater health insurance plans.

Sometimes for our own negligence and sometimes for natural climatic changes we can’t protect ourselves from falling sick. But when we can be covered at least for the entailing expenses, why shouldn’t we do so at the earliest possible?

Recommended Read: A Guide to Buy Health Insurance For Women