As a woman, leading a full and healthy life involves emotional, social, cultural, spiritual, and physical well-being. While Canadians are among the healthiest people in the world and the life expectancy of Canadian women is one of the highest, staying healthy can be challenging.
Health and dental insurance is designed to address the lifetime needs of women. Here are just five ways it contributes to and supports our health.
1. Health insurance helps women manage stress
Stress from workload, finances and work-life balance all impact women. According to CAMH, women are more likely than men to report feeling stressed. Women tend to react more to chronic stressors like time constraints, meeting others’ expectations, marital relationships, children, and family health. Signals of stress may include:
- headaches and quicker heart rate actions
- feeling worried or angry or that you can’t cope
- negative thoughts and losing self-confidence.
Having some of these symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re over-stressed. But women experiencing a lot of these symptoms may want to seek extra support or advice.
Health insurance includes coverage for
Coverage for Professional / Registered Therapists
Expenses for therapy including individual, marriage and family therapy, or addiction counselling can really add up. Visits for counselling provided by a psychologist or social worker to discover ways to manage stress may be covered under a health insurance plan.
Medications
Many individuals find that prescription medication decreases their suffering from stress and improves their quality of life. Treatment may continue for many years. A health insurance plan can cover costs for a wide variety of prescription drugs.
Alternative Therapies
When it comes to improving your overall well-being in mind, body and spirit, some women choose alternative therapies. Naturopathic doctors, Swedish and shiatsu massage performed by registered therapists, and eastern-based acupuncture are just some of the options individuals choose. These services are not covered by their government health plan and fees charged may be partly covered by health insurance. Chiropractic adjustments are often sought to help release muscle tension, and chiropractors can offer relaxation techniques to help patients manage stress. Like coverage for other registered therapists, the dollar amount covered per visit and the annual combined maximum benefit will be outlined in your health insurance plan.
Health insurance also delivers many “built-in” tools that can help women learn new ways to deal with the expected and unexpected in life like mindfulness tools that help individuals connect with the moment instead of reliving past regrets or worrying about the future. Some plans also help women access virtual care for secure medical consultations with friendly, knowledgeable clinicians on their mobile smartphone or tablet by text or video chat whenever and wherever they need it.
2. Health insurance helps women maintain their health
Health insurance plans can also include motivational programs to help individuals focus and achieve their health goals, including digital therapy
- Access to recent articles on finding care, managing their health, and preventing illness
- Easy-to-use search tools to help them find a doctor, health facility, or community support group in their area
- Provincial health resource information
- Trusted information on conditions and prescription drugs.
More importantly health insurance can assist in the costs of managing many chronic health conditions. Understanding the importance of good health, SBIS offers health insurance plans that have support tools built in to help you manage or avoid chronic health issues:
- Green Shield Prism health insurance plans include support for cardiovascular health and smoking cessation, as well as dietician health coaching to support you by promoting and encourage healthier food choices. They also assist with achieving and/or maintaining a healthy weight.
- Manulife Vitality is available to new applicants on FlexCare and FollowMe plans and offers an interactive, personalized wellness program that rewards you with savings up to 10% on your (and your family’s) health insurance premiums, and also gives you discounts on services like hotel bookings and gym memberships and gift cards!
- GMS Personal Health plans offer LifeWorks, an award-winning total wellness program that can help you improve your mental, physical, financial, and social wellbeing using a wealth of resources and tools through an app, by phone, or on your desktop.
3. Health insurance helps women take care of their family
Women still take on most of the family burden when it comes to childcare responsibilities, especially if a child falls ill or has an accident. Children tend to get sick more often than adults, and they can have special healthcare considerations.
There may be many products and services that are not covered under the child’s provincial plan that a child may need, leaving the family vulnerable to the financial impact of an unexpected illness or injury.
Having health insurance in place enables a mother to offset some of the out-of-pocket healthcare costs like
Prescription drugs
While some provinces provide pharmacare programs for children and youth, the number of drugs covered is limited. Private health insurance plans can cover thousands more drugs than those offered under provincial plans.
Dental care
Dental insurance helps offset the cost of your child’s oral care. A regular check-up can cost hundreds of dollars (and specialized care may cost thousands), but with insurance coverage the out-of-pocket cost would only be a portion of the total.
Vision care
While most provinces cover the cost of eye exams for children, the cost of prescription glasses or lenses is not covered. Health insurance can help families with eyewear costs.
Alternative and complementary therapies
For various health problems some children may benefit from massage, physiotherapy, or chiropractic care. Speech therapy or mental health counselling may be needed. Over the years, these can amount to thousands of dollars.
The cost of maintaining your children’s good health can add up quickly. For any woman with kids, purchasing a supplemental insurance policy can help protect her from these out-of-pocket expenses.
4. Health insurance provides security for life
Women face major events during their lifetime – some that build security and some that don’t. It is vital to retain financial security and to have tools in place to achieve a healthy life balance – and that includes health insurance.
Remember, provincial or territorial health plans only covers basic healthcare needs, but health insurance helps an individual to pay for services that aren’t covered, such as private nursing services, ambulance transportation, wheelchairs, medical equipment, and dental care costs.
Regardless of relationship changes, employment changes or health changes, health insurance stays in place through working and non-working years.
Women consider these factors when making the decision to buy their own individual health insurance plan:
- Putting your own individual coverage in place ensures that you can be continuously covered regardless of where you work, or if you are working at all (and that helps you be financially secure).
- You can choose coverage for the health benefits you want most, like major dental costs, psychologist visits or increasingly popular alternative therapies like visits to chiropractors, physiotherapists, or massage therapists.
- Your health insurance can be designed to co-ordinate with your employer coverage to increase overall protection (if you had coverage under both your group plan and your ex’s, you may lose benefits that you had depended on to top up your existing group coverage).
- If you are in good health now, you have the freedom to choose the best policy possible and the security of knowing you can keep it for life, regardless of whether you have other health insurance in place or not. If you have health concerns, you are eligible for guaranteed issue plans for your coverage needs.
Women — especially women on their own — need health insurance
During a woman’s lifetime, paying for healthcare services can be a real challenge because of a combination of hurdles women may face like absence from the workforce or limited career paths, low wages, and lack of private pensions and savings. These factors can make women vulnerable to health challenges and financial stability later in life. Independently purchasing health and dental insurance is key to a healthy lifetime. SBIS make it easy to find the best heath insurance solution online or contact us for expert guidance. We’re happy to help.
