Personal Planner: Choose medical coverage astutely

Question: My sister has just been diagnosed with diabetes, a disease my father has had for the past 10 years. All three of us joined hundreds of other sufferers at the Dubai Diabetes Walkathon, and I was wondering what type of insurance should we have to ensure that our health care needs are covered for the long-term?

Answer: Diabetes is a growing phenomenon in the UAE — official estimates suggest that one in four people suffer from the disease, which is linked to obesity and sedentary lifestyles, both of which is becoming more common in younger people.

Being diagnosed with a chronic condition such as diabetes means that you will have long-term healthcare needs. Diabetes can be effectively managed, but medical care and the supplies needed to monitor and control blood glucose levels are expensive, amounting to hundreds of dollars per month.

Those adults with diabetes and no medical insurance cover are far less likely to receive the best level of care to effectively manage their disease.

Start planning

Your family obviously has a high-risk of developing diabetes, so the best thing you can do now is to start changing your lifestyle to become more physically active, and to get your weight down to its ideal level. The second thing you must do is speak to an independent financial adviser and discuss the best medical insurance policies for you and your family.

It is important that when you discuss the purchase of a medical policy, you disclose that you have a pre-existing condition. Failure to divulge this important information, could lead to your policy being cancelled for non-disclosure.

It is also extremely important to note — given your father's condition — that many insurance companies in the UAE exclude pre-existing conditions and congenital defects (something that has been present from birth) for individual policies.

‘Pre-existing conditions' or ‘chronic conditions' cover all previous medical conditions that continue over an extended period of time, and that cannot be easily resolved. However, insurance companies are more flexible in terms of including these conditions under group insurance schemes.

No coverage

Other insurers will provide a moratorium clause that means you will not be covered for a previous medical condition, until you have been insured with the same company for a set period of time, without any symptoms or treatment for that condition. This can be anything from two to five years.

Research your options, if you're having any financial difficulty with proper management of your diabetes then it is even more important to get good medical cover early on, as the potential costs of improper or inadequate care are much higher than most insurance premiums will ever be.

Alongside cover for day to day management of diabetes, you must also check to see what other care any potential policy covers. Will the plan allow for you to have regular kidney dialysis if needed? If you require physiotherapy for loss of the use of a limb, will it cover this? As importantly will it cover nursing care at home in the future?

Of course, all health insurance will only cover necessary treatments, procedures, and care. If you lose the ability to work for any period of time, then you will also need a critical illness policy to cover you for any loss of earnings during periods of sickness.

In terms of other types of illness, most policies routinely include emergency situations and general health issues such as childhood immunisations, health check-ups, and elective surgery.

However, primary care consultations, dental care, obstetric care for unmarried women, and screening for cancers are not all routinely covered in policies available in the UAE.

The writer is Team leader General Insurance at Nexus Insurance Brokers LLC. Opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not reflect that of Gulf News. If you have any questions, please email it to advice@gulfnews.com