Does your insurance cover sport and active lifestyles?
Living an active lifestyle can be difficult. After all, between your job, social life, and loved ones it isn’t easy to fit working out into our days. However, many of us do make staying active and living a healthy lifestyle a priority due to all the benefits one can realize. Not only do we generally look and feel better as a result of working out regularly, we also get a whole host of long term health benefits. Maintaining low body fat prevents all the ailments associated with obesity, including diabetes. Getting our blood circulating leads to a healthier cardiovascular system and reduces the risk of strokes and heart attacks. A healthy diet and lifestyle combined with exercise has also shown to lead to lower risk of developing all types of cancer. Seemingly, all the people in Singapore that make an effort to stay healthy are those that can also see what kind of physical shape they want to be in many years down the line, and are willing to do what it takes to get there. However, there are even risks involved with staying healthy.
The problem with exercising regularly is that when we use our bodies, we risk causing harm to them. Ask anybody who has broken a bone doing team sports or strained a muscle at the gym and they’ll tell you that if you want gains, there will definitely be some pain. And while lesser injuries will mend with just some time and rest, there are greater injuries that can result from sports that might have serious ramifications on a person’s quality of life. If a serious accident occurred as a result of your athletic activities, would you ultimately be okay? Here we examine sports injuries and how they relate to your healthcare and insurance. In order to do this, we have outlined 5 questions that you should be asking.
Do you actually possess insurance?
Of course PR’s and Singapore citizens can use the city’s public healthcare system. However for expatriates in Singapore (EP holders), obtaining private health insurance is immensely important in order to avoid paying out of pocket for the costs of catastrophic hospitalizations.
Beyond this, if you are the primary policy holder on your health insurance policy, you will no doubt want to check it to make sure that your other family members are covered by the policy as well. As we all know, kids are the most active people around, as well as the most accident prone. Ensuring that their sports-related accidents are covered by your health insurance should be of the utmost importance.
Are there exclusions?
Exclusions, with regard to insurance, are items or ailments that an insurance plan will not provide benefits for. Generally these will include hazardous activities or pre-existing conditions. Normally, private health insurance policies will cover most amateur sports, however if you play professionally, injuries due to sports are likely to be excluded. Special insurance plans may be available for such athletes, though.
Are your sports covered?
Another important bit of information to check on is whether or not your favorite activities will be covered by your plan. As mentioned above many extreme sports may not be covered, but what exactly is considered an extreme sport? For example, some health insurance policies may not cover injuries sustained while engaging in unusually dangerous sports such as skiing, skateboarding, or hang gliding.
Again, it is important to study your insurance policy to make sure that all of the pastimes that you partake in will be covered. This is true for every member of your family on your insurance plan.
Are you covered internationally?
While local private medical insurance policies in Singapore may address your needs within the city-state, whether or not they will pay on claims for injuries sustained while outside the country is a different matter entirely. Whether you’re participating in an competition abroad, or just using the hotel fitness room while on a business holiday, your local insurance coverage is likely not to cover any medical treatments that happen outside of Singapore.
Fortunately there are international medical insurance plans available, like those through Pacific Prime Singapore, which will have identical benefits in virtually any country worldwide. These highly flexible plans can also allow you to choose any medical facility you want for healthcare.
Is your coverage well suited to your needs?
There are times when people think that their medical insurance policy will cover just about any injury under the sun. Then, once they need to use it, they find that their insurance is far more limited in scope than they previously thought. Serious sports injuries can not only require quick surgery or other treatment, but long term benefits can also be needed to cover treatments like physical rehabilitation. For this reason, those that engage in sports regularly will want to find a medical insurance plan that includes both in-patient and out-patient coverage, as well as benefit limits that will adequately address even the worst case scenarios so that it is never a requirement to pay out-of-pocket.
If you have inquiries about your current insurance, or you need to compare premium prices and plan specifics between Singapore insurance companies, contact the helpful staff at Pacific Prime Singapore today.
Serena earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. As such, she is an avid advocate of mental health and is fascinated by all things psychology (especially if it’s cognitive psychology!).
Her previous work experience includes teaching toddlers to read, writing for a travel/wellness online magazine, and then a business news blog. These combined experiences give her the skills and insights she needs to explain complex ideas in a succinct way. Being the daughter of an immigrant and a traveler herself, she is passionate about educating expats and digital nomads on travel and international health insurance.
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