Last Updated on August 30, 2021 at 9:07 am
Here is a free ebook on health insurance prepared by Venkatesh Jayaraman. Use it to understand the features of a health insurance policy and choose one suited to your needs. The ebook was shared a few days ago by the author on Twitter.
Mr Jayaraman kindly consented to not only share it with freefincal readers but also readily wrote a short bio and why he has painstakingly prepared this document. Hopefully, his ebook will make the most challenging decision in personal finance easier!
Author Bio: I was brought up in Chennai and move around Bengaluru, Chennai, Mysuru and Pune to cater my career requirements. But primarily live in Bengaluru and Chennai. Personal finance was my interest even before I started to earn. I found that many youngsters were mismanaging their hard-earned money, and few also had to borrow in the month-end for their food expenses. I used to discuss with them and enlighten on money management and personal finance.
I then extended this knowledge or advisory to new joiners, so that they can plan their finances well from the initial years of their earning and thereby put compounding to work at an early age of 25. I had been voluntarily doing this over the last few years until my work demanded frequent travels. I started investing stocks from the peak of January 2008, the right time to have learned many lessons on stock investment directly from the markets ?
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I tweet on Personal Finance, and Stock market with my Twitter handle @EWFA_. My landing page with various eBook, Presentation, Compilation and notes is here: My Notes and Compilation on Value Investing. My YouTube channel is Empowering With Financial Awareness
Why an ebook on Health Insurance?
Let me first give a brief on the background of my interest in Health Insurance. Till a few years back like many, I made the mistake of not taking a Health Insurance, in the view that corporate cover was sufficient. Even if there was a need, I felt that my net worth was adequate to manage. Little did I realise, how wrong my beliefs were till a couple of incidents exposed my ignorance:
- One relative spent a massive amount for their daughter’s hospitalisation. There was a sequence of surgeries and admissions. In no time, they were in a tight corner despite having a useful net worth a couple of months back.
- My friend’s dad aged 75+ was sick and had to spend a considerable amount for hospitalisation and could not get any cover at that age, owing to his pre-existing conditions. My friend and his father had to bear the entire amount from their pockets, savings and borrowings.
These two incidents were enough for me to make my mind about taking health insurance. Now comes the background of this work. It is a bit long story, which started a few months back.
- I shared the necessity of taking Health Insurance to few of my friends and peers, who also agreed to take a cover
- In 2-3 days one of them took a policy and told us that it was easy and all was over in a few minutes.
- When asked a few questions about policy feature, he had no answers other than he going for a lower premium product
- I was not convinced by his approach as Health Insurance being a long term product, which must be taken after proper study and not in haste.
- I decided to compare the features in detail and go for a product. My other peers who wanted to Health Insurance cover agreed that they would take the product that I choose
- I chose 2-3 products and discussed the features so that they were aware before they purchase the policy
- Only in this discussion was I able to make out that the requirement of every friend/peer was different and they may not be able to take the policy that I take, a few issues that came up were:
- One person did not worry about AYUSH benefits
- Few wanted Ayush benefits, but within them, some were ok for a sub-limit of 20% of SI for Ayush benefits, while others did not like the restriction
- One person was worried over getting affected by life-threating diseases – There came an added work to compare Critical Illness plans
- This way the requirements was not fitting the features of 2-3 products
- I decided to take some more time and open the search for the entire market across all plans and list the elements so that peers and friends could match their requirements from the stack of data and finally arrive 2-3 plans that best suits (or at least) closely suit their needs.
- The data collection started, and the initial idea was to capture ‘YES’, or ‘NO’ against a particular feature, i.e. AYUSH Benefits – Yes / No filled in each cell
- But there were too many variants in every feature, and a proper number only would help to make a decision, i.e. Instead of saying ‘YES’ for ‘No-Claim Bonus’, I would update with values like “10% of SI, up to a Max of 50%” and so on.
- To be safe, I decided to go by the value or clauses as in ‘Policy Wording’ document
- So, had to download close to 100 documents and screen for features, number and wordings
- This way this work became more significant than what I initially anticipated
- Then came a thought, that after putting so much effort let me pack with a write up on jargon/feature details and pack it as an eBook for the benefit of a bigger audience
This is how all started and became an eBook. Thanks for sharing this file in your platform.
I also take this chance to thank you (Mr Pattabiraman) for the great work you have been doing in the area of personal finance. In fact, I did listen to a few of your videos on Health Insurance.
Download the Health Insurance Ebook
Once you are comfortable with the basics, you can use this Health Insurance Policy Comparison Spreadsheet and shortlist a policy. Further assistance is also available here: How to select a health insurance policy in 2019: A Webinar. Please take action asap in this regard.
Please join me in thanking Venkatesh Jayaraman for his excellent effort.
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Dr M. Pattabiraman(PhD) is the founder, managing editor and primary author of freefincal. He is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has over ten years of experience publishing news analysis, research and financial product development. Connect with him via Twitter(X), Linkedin, or YouTube. Pattabiraman has co-authored three print books: (1) You can be rich too with goal-based investing (CNBC TV18) for DIY investors. (2) Gamechanger for young earners. (3) Chinchu Gets a Superpower! for kids. He has also written seven other free e-books on various money management topics. He is a patron and co-founder of “Fee-only India,” an organisation promoting unbiased, commission-free investment advice.Our flagship course! Learn to manage your portfolio like a pro to achieve your goals regardless of market conditions! ⇐ More than 3,000 investors and advisors are part of our exclusive community! Get clarity on how to plan for your goals and achieve the necessary corpus no matter the market condition is!! Watch the first lecture for free! One-time payment! No recurring fees! Life-long access to videos! Reduce fear, uncertainty and doubt while investing! Learn how to plan for your goals before and after retirement with confidence.
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