Your lifestyle diseases and the group mediclaim policy from your workplace have a close connection.
Lifestyle diseases refer to health conditions people suffer from due to their lifestyle habits. The city population harbours unhealthy habits, such as sleeping less than 8 hours, not eating proper meals, eating unhealthy junk food and not exercising.
Combine these habits with alcohol consumption and smoking, and you will see its direct impact on the group health insurance (GHI) premiums.
Today, we will understand the impact lifestyle habits have on GHI policies and the causes of this impact.
Lifestyle Diseases that Impact Group Health Insurance Policy
Let us list the diseases caused by lifestyle habits:
- Cardiovascular diseases
- Stroke
- Diabetes
- Hypertension or hypotension
- Obesity
- Cancers (lung cancer due to smoking)
- Kidney failure (alcohol consumption)
- Liver diseases (fatty liver disease)
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Osteoarthritis
- Respiratory ailments
- Arteriosclerosis
How Lifestyle Diseases Affect Group Health Insurance Policy
You can observe a notable impact of these lifestyle diseases on the group health insurance cost. The group health insurance premium is highly influenced by such lifestyle diseases among the covered group members.
Some of the abovementioned health conditions are chronic in nature, and severe illnesses and are associated with higher healthcare costs. You can observe a direct reflection of these determining factors on the premium when you buy group health insurance.
When one or more members of the insured group foster one or more habits or diseases that affect the insured’s health, even the best group health insurance will seek a larger premium amount.
This increase occurs because the probability of such employees raising a claim is higher than average. The increased chance of getting sick leads to an increase in the premium.
Lifestyle Habits that Impact Group Insurance Policy Premium
● Tobacco Smoking
Tobacco, consumed in any way, smoking or oral, is extremely harmful to your health. It degrades the quality of your health like no other substance does. Extreme and unregulated consumption of tobacco can lead to health problems, issues in breathing, oral or lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
All of the aforementioned health conditions require expensive medical treatments. So, the connection is pretty straightforward: high chances of contracting the disease, high chances of filing for a claim, high medical treatment costs and high policy premiums.
● Alcohol Consumption
Excessive and unregulated alcohol consumption can result in multiple health-related issues, be it liver diseases, kidney failures, cancers, cardiovascular problems and other issues. Apart from affecting your physical health, excess alcohol can also mess up your brain chemistry, leading to addiction and other mental health issues such as hallucinations and memory loss.
All these medical conditions require highly costly treatments, making it another habit that can cause a spike in the premium amount of your GHI policy.
● Obesity
Obesity is a huge problem in India and around the world. With more packaged food being produced today than ever, it has become difficult for people to control the urge to go for it.
Employees are busy and burdened by office responsibilities and often find no time to cook a meal and have it. This leads them to find cheaper and faster alternatives like ready-to-make, packaged food or, worse, fast food joints.
This has caused a gradual rise in the number of obese people in the country. Obesity causes diseases like diabetes, hyper or hypoglycemia, cardiovascular issues, hyper or hypotension and much more. These diseases require a large amount of financial coverage resulting in higher group health insurance costs.
Tips to Reduce Group Insurance Policy Premium
When you buy group health insurance from reputed insurers like Tata AIG, the policy form asks you whether or not you drink and smoke, asks you to fill in your weight and height to calculate the body-mass index, and determines the premium amount based on the majority of answers.
Avoid all these issues with small tips given below:
- Find time to exercise.
- Avoid smoking and alcohol.
- Eat proper meals.
- Follow a healthy sleep schedule.
- Get regular checkups done.
- Try to maintain a steady and healthy weight.
- Avoid packaged, sugar-heavy and processed food.
- Limit your sedentary lifestyle; reduce the screen and sitting time.
- Socialise every day or get outdoors every day.
- Add multivitamin supplements, if possible.
Ending Note
Everyone needs to direct their life into leading a healthy lifestyle to stay fit and fine till the end. However, it is, after all, an ideal situation that can be difficult to gain. However, finding a work-life balance is still easier than trying to balance the affordability of group insurance policy premiums and comprehensive healthcare benefits.
Make good life choices if you want a lower rate of premium and maximised benefits in your GHI policy.