Health is Wealth. This is true for your family as well. Fulfilling the material needs of your family members and giving them a comfortable and affluent lifestyle is well and good. However, ensuring that they are healthy is even more important. This is because the bad health of even one family member leads to a frequent drain on the family’s finances due to medical treatment. The financial expenses become more damaging for the family’s finances in case of critical illness affecting any family member.
Thus, it is necessary to reduce family health expenses to a minimum by ensuring that you and your family members do not suffer from serious medical conditions and have adequate financial cover even in case of contracting a grave disease.
Best Ways to Minimize Family Health Expenses
Develop a Healthy Lifestyle
A healthy lifestyle adopted by the family reduces family health expenses by preventing health issues such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, asthma, etc. All such conditions require prolonged treatment which drains the finances of the family. Thus, a healthy lifestyle is a necessity for each and every family member. There are several aspects of a healthy lifestyle. Some of them have been discussed here.
Exercise
A culture of physical fitness must be adopted by the family members. To this end, daily workouts should be a part of the routine. Each and every family member must perform some exercise each day, such as holding a plank position, cycling, jogging, running, pushups, jumping jacks and more. The family members must also indulge in sporting activities such as football, badminton, basketball, etc.
At least 30-45 minutes of exercise each day keeps serious medical conditions at bay and reduces family health expenses.
Eat Well-Balanced Diet
The family should adopt a well-balanced diet. The children in the family especially should be encouraged to eat well-balanced meals so that it becomes a habit and stick to a well-balanced diet in adulthood. To this end, ensure that each meal includes adequate fresh vegetables and fruits. Cut down on carbohydrates in the family diet.
Avoid unhealthy snacking and limit your family diet to three well-balanced meals in a day. However, if your family members, especially children, have cravings for snacks, ensure healthy snacking options instead of chips or fast food items.
A well-balanced diet keeps the family members in the best of health by providing proper nutrition, thereby minimizing family health expenses.
Stay Hydrated
Water is important for various body functions, brain functions, immunity, and general health. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that your family members are properly hydrated. In order to remain hydrated, each family member should drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. In addition, fresh fruit juice can be squeezed each day for the family to ensure both proper nutrition and a good amount of water intake.
Avoid Excess Intake of Caffeine
Caffeine tends to increase blood pressure and heart rate, which leads to several health problems. Thus, limiting caffeine intake helps in reducing family health expenses. Hence, it must be ensured that the family members do not drink too much of coffee, tea, and carbonated drinks. Healthier options such as fruit or vegetable juices must be consumed more instead.
Adequate Sleep
Sleep is necessary for the human body. Lack of sleep results in exhaustion which impairs both brain functions and other systems of the body, thereby causing a number of health problems. Thus, ensuring that all the family members are getting enough sleep is necessary to reduce family health expenses.
8 hours of sleep every day is necessary for good health. Therefore, you need to make sure that your family members, especially children, go to bed early to get enough sleep before waking up early in the morning. The family’s screen time, which means the time spent in front of television, smartphones, or laptops, must be reduced to ensure adequate sleep.
Routine Medical Check-Ups
Routine medical check-ups play a crucial role in reducing family health expenses. This is because routine medical check-ups assess the overall health status of every family member. Even minor ailments are detected and treated during medical check-ups before they assume serious forms necessitating expensive treatments.
Routine medical check-ups give you a clear picture of the health status of your family. Any changes in the lifestyle if required can be gauged by assessing the reports given by the doctor.
Buy Family Floater Health Insurance
Despite all efforts to maintain your family’s health in the best possible state, the risk to you and your family members of medical emergencies requiring hospitalization does not disappear. Thus, your family health expenses must be covered by a family floater health insurance to prevent financial losses caused by expensive hospitalization expenses.
Family floater health insurance covers all the family members under a single policy. Individual health insurance covers only one person. The sum insured in a family floater health insurance plan, on the other hand, covers each and every family member named in the policy. Thus, it is better to opt for a family floater health insurance policy rather than purchase individual health insurance for each family member.
Getting senior citizen parents covered under a family floater health insurance is easier as compared to getting senior citizen health insurance for them. Family floater health insurance provides a greater sum insured at lower premiums. The possibility of the entire sum insured getting exhausted is remote because the chances of the entire family getting hospitalized within a single policy term are slim.
Family floater, health insurance plans, cover hospitalization expenses. A family floater health insurance plan, can provide additional benefits such as coverages for ambulance charges, domiciliary hospitalization, daycare procedures, OPD charges, and preventive health check-ups. Pre and post-hospitalization expenses can also be covered depending upon the plan.
