YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR BIGGEST FINANCIAL ASSET; HERE IS HOW TO PROTECT IT

Last week we spoke about retirement planning, the corpus you need, the instruments that build it, and why women must plan independently and for longer than they perhaps expect. We ended with a promise: this week, we talk about the piece of retirement that nobody plans for and everybody eventually faces.

Your health.

This is not a health column. This is a finance column. But health and money are more entangled than most of us acknowledge, and nowhere is that entanglement more expensive, or more avoidable, than in the years leading up to and during retirement.

Let us begin with two facts that every Indian woman needs to sit with.

Breast cancer is now the most common cancer among Indian women, accounting for more than one in four of all female cancers. Cases have risen steadily, from around two lakh in 2019 to over two lakh twenty thousand in 2023, and the trend is upward. What makes this particularly relevant for this column is not the medical dimension but the financial one. Treatment for breast cancer in India, covering surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and targeted therapy, can cost between seven lakh and sixteen lakh rupees depending on the stage, the hospital, and the treatment plan. A private hospital in a metro city will be at the higher end. A government hospital will be lower, but not zero.

Diabetes is the second fact. India now has ninety million adults living with diabetes, the second highest number in the world. Among women specifically, the risk rises significantly after forty-five, and lifestyle and dietary changes have pushed onset younger in urban and semi-urban India. Diabetes is a lifelong condition with recurring costs: medication, monitoring, specialist consultations, and the management of complications that develop over time. Over a decade, the out-of-pocket cost of managing diabetes can run into lakhs.

Neither of these is a reason for alarm. Both are reasons for preparation. And the most powerful preparation available to any woman reading this column is adequate health insurance, in her own name, bought before the diagnosis arrives.

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Here is the part most people learn too late.

Most health insurance policies carry a waiting period of two to four years for pre-existing conditions. If you have diabetes, hypertension, a thyroid condition, or any other chronic illness when you buy the policy, your insurer will not cover treatment for that condition during the waiting period. Some policies extend this to four years. If you buy health insurance after a diagnosis, you are paying premiums for coverage that does not protect you when you most need it.

This is why health insurance must be bought early, before the conditions arrive. A thirty-five year old who buys a policy today pays a lower premium, starts with full coverage, and has years before any chronic condition is even part of her medical history. A fifty-five year old buying health insurance for the first time will pay a higher premium, face longer waiting periods, and may find certain conditions already excluded based on her health declaration.

Most families in India have some form of health insurance. But most of it sits in one of two problematic structures. The first is an employer-provided group policy, which covers you only as long as you are employed. The day you resign, retire, or are laid off, the cover disappears. Many women in their fifties discover this at exactly the moment when they need coverage most. The second is a family floater where the primary insured is the husband. If he dies, or if the marriage ends, she loses coverage and must apply for a new policy at an older age, with higher premiums and the pre-existing condition problem in full force.

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Every woman needs a policy in her own name. Not as an add-on to someone else's plan. Her own.

How much cover is enough? In most Indian cities today, five lakhs per person is the absolute minimum, and genuinely not enough for a serious illness. Ten lakhs is a more realistic baseline. If the full premium feels steep, a base policy of five lakhs combined with a super top-up that kicks in above that threshold gives you meaningful coverage at a lower combined cost. Super top-up premiums are significantly lower than base policy premiums.

Critical illness policies pay a lump sum upon diagnosis of specified conditions: cancer, heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure among others. This is separate from hospitalisation cover. It replaces income during the months or years you cannot work. For any woman who contributes financially to her household, this is worth exploring.

If you are already past fifty and buying health insurance for the first time, buy what you can and do it immediately. But also maintain a dedicated medical emergency fund. This is liquid money set aside specifically for health costs that insurance may not cover, including waiting period gaps, non-covered treatments, and day-to-day chronic disease management. Two to three lakhs in a liquid fund earmarked for health is a meaningful buffer.

One more thing. Many women avoid getting health checks because they are afraid of what the results might show. This is understandable. It is also expensive. A breast cancer caught at stage one has a survival rate above ninety percent and a significantly lower treatment cost than one caught at stage three or four. Early detection does not create the illness. It gives you options and time. An annual health check, a mammography after forty, and awareness of the early signs of diabetes are not medical advice. They are financial advice. The earlier you know, the less it costs.

Your body is the engine that runs your financial life. Protecting it is not separate from financial planning. It is financial planning.

You cannot build wealth for others if you have not protected the one who builds it.

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