You must have often heard from many financially sound individuals that you should buy health insurance as early as possible. Many people follow this advice and buy a policy right away. But, how many of us truly know what that advice means? Many assume is to be an expression of grabbing the best deals while they are available. On the other hand, many assume it to be about making an early investment in your life. While those are not incorrect reasons for buying health insurance early, that is not what the advice often means.

The advice of buying a health insurance early is to do with your age. Aging is a natural part of life. As you age, you gain a lot of things and you leave a lot of things behind. A higher age means you grow further in life and have newer experiences. But it also means a bigger lifestyle and the expenses to support it. Since health insurance is heavily affected by the lifestyle you have. Your age automatically becomes a factor in deciding the premium. To put it simply, the same amount of coverage as today will cost you higher at a later age. Here are a few reasons why age leads to an increase in premium:

Risk of critical illnesses

Critical illnesses are a category of medical conditions that insurance providers consider highly dangerous. These diseases can either have a huge effect on your life or could prove to be fatal as well. Moreover, the treatment for these illnesses is highly expensive. Different insurance providers have a separate list of critical illnesses that they offer coverage for as part of an add-on. Some of the illnesses that every provider covers includes different type of cancer, strokes, rare heart conditions, etc.

With increasing age, you become more prone to these illnesses. This means it becomes riskier for your insurance provider to cover you. To compensate for this risk, an insurance company will charge you a higher premium.

Pre-existing illnesses 

The word ‘pre-existing’ itself means something that existed before. In the case of health insurance policy, pre-existing illnesses mean that you would have before buying the policy. While there is no guarantee that you may not develop an illness at a young age, they often occur at an older age. Once you buy a policy with pre-existing illnesses, you will have to go through a waiting period of 2 to 3 years before the plan covers these illnesses. 2 to 3 years is a long time and any existing illness can go from bad to worse in a matter of days. Not having coverage for it means that your health insurance policy is useless at the time. Moreover, having pre-existing illnesses while buying a policy also makes it riskier for the insurance company to cover you. Hence, the premium they charge you will also be higher.

Buying a health insurance policy at an early age means that you do not have to wait through a long period to get covered for specific diseases. Also, you do not have to suffer a higher premium due to pre-existing illnesses.

Higher healthcare expenses

In recent times, healthcare has seen major advances due to new technological innovations and medical procedures. Unfortunately, this also means that medical expenses for you to be made also increase. Today, medical expenses are not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. This means at some point in time, you will need to pay for medical expenses. For that, you will need health insurance. To make sure you are ready for whenever there is a need for medical care, you do not have to arrange money from elsewhere to pay the bills. Buy health insurance as soon as possible and make sure you buy adequate coverage.

Moreover, at an older age, you will need more money to cover more medical needs. By buying health insurance early, you make sure you have ample time to adjust your health coverage as you move into newer stages of life.