Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami. - Health insurance is important for our family.

Saya lapar. = I hungry. → “I am hungry.”
Rumah itu besar. = That house big. → “That house is big.”
Asuransi kesehatan penting. = Health insurance important. → “Health insurance is important.”

Can I say “Asuransi kesehatan adalah penting bagi keluarga kami”?

This is grammatically understandable, but it sounds unnatural in everyday Indonesian.

Adalah is mainly used:

between two nouns or noun phrases
- Dia adalah dokter. = He/She is a doctor.
or between a subject and a descriptive noun phrase
- Pendidikan adalah hal yang penting. = Education is something important.

When the predicate is a plain adjective (like penting), Indonesians normally omit adalah:

✅ Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami.
❌ Asuransi kesehatan adalah penting bagi keluarga kami. (awkward)

More natural “formal” alternatives if you really want to use adalah:

Asuransi kesehatan adalah hal yang penting bagi keluarga kami.
(Health insurance is something important for our family.)

What is the difference between bagi and untuk here? Are both correct?

In this sentence, both are correct:

Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami.
Asuransi kesehatan penting untuk keluarga kami.

bagi and untuk can both mean “for”, but there are some tendencies:

bagi
- Slightly more formal, often in writing
- Often used with abstract effects / benefits:
  - Pendidikan sangat penting bagi masa depan.
    Education is very important for the future.
untuk
- Very common and neutral, used in both speech and writing
- Used broadly with purposes, recipients, and beneficiaries:
  - Ini hadiah untuk ibu. = This is a present for mom.
  - Latihan ini baik untuk kesehatan. = This exercise is good for health.

So in daily speech, you might hear untuk more often, but bagi in your sentence is perfectly natural and correct.

Why do we say “keluarga kami” instead of just “kami”?

Both are possible, but they are not identical in meaning:

bagi kami = for us
bagi keluarga kami = for our family

bagi kami focuses directly on the people who are speaking as individuals.

bagi keluarga kami focuses on the family unit as a group. It suggests you’re talking about the well-being or situation of your family as a family.

You could say:

Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi kami.
Health insurance is important for us.

This is correct, but it has a slightly different nuance: it’s about you (and maybe others) personally, not about “our family” as a group.

In many contexts they overlap, but keluarga kami sounds more natural if you specifically mean our family as an entity.

What is the difference between kami and kita?

Both mean “we / us”, but:

kami = we (not including the person spoken to)
→ exclusive “we”
kita = we (including the person spoken to)
→ inclusive “we”

In English, both are just “we”, but Indonesian distinguishes them.

Examples:

Talking to someone outside your family:
- Keluarga kami tinggal di Jakarta.
  Our family (not including you) lives in Jakarta.
Talking to your own family members:
- Kita harus punya asuransi kesehatan.
  We (you and I, all of us) must have health insurance.

In Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami, kami shows the speaker is talking about their own family, not including the listener.

Why is it “Asuransi kesehatan” and not “Kesehatan asuransi”?

In Indonesian noun phrases, the main noun (the “head”) usually comes first, and the modifier comes after.

asuransi = insurance (head noun)
kesehatan = health (modifier noun)

So asuransi kesehatan literally is “insurance (of) health”, i.e. health insurance.

Putting kesehatan first (kesehatan asuransi) would sound wrong or at least very odd in Indonesian, like saying “health insurance” in English but with words reversed to “health of insurance”.

Other examples:

asuransi mobil = car insurance
(insurance of car)
rumah sakit = hospital
(house of sickness → “sick house”)
kartu kredit = credit card
(card of credit)

So the pattern is: [main noun] + [modifier].

Does “asuransi kesehatan” mean “health insurance in general” or “the health insurance”?

Indonesian usually does not use articles like “the”, “a”, or “an”. The noun asuransi kesehatan can be:

generic: health insurance in general
- Asuransi kesehatan penting. = Health insurance is important.
specific: the/this/that health insurance, if clear from context

To make it clearly specific, you can add words like:

ini (this)
itu (that)
tersebut (the … in question / the aforementioned)

Examples:

Asuransi kesehatan ini mahal.
This health insurance is expensive.
Saya mau membatalkan asuransi kesehatan tersebut.
I want to cancel the health insurance (in question).

In your sentence without any extra word, Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami most naturally means “Health insurance (in general) is important for our family.”

Can I say “Asuransi kesehatan penting untuk keluarga kami” or “buat keluarga kami”?

Yes:

Asuransi kesehatan penting untuk keluarga kami. ✅
= completely natural and common
Asuransi kesehatan penting buat keluarga kami. ✅
= very informal / colloquial

Rough guide:

bagi – slightly formal, often written, but fine in speech
untuk – neutral, very common in all contexts
buat – casual, everyday spoken Indonesian

You might say:

Speaking or writing formally:
- Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami.
- Asuransi kesehatan penting untuk keluarga kami.
Chatting with friends:
- Asuransi kesehatan penting buat keluarga kami.

Can the word order be “Bagi keluarga kami, asuransi kesehatan penting”?

Yes, that is also correct:

Bagi keluarga kami, asuransi kesehatan penting.

Indonesian allows fronting a phrase like bagi keluarga kami to put emphasis on that phrase or to set the topic first:

Bagi keluarga kami, asuransi kesehatan penting.
→ As for our family, health insurance is important.

Both orders are natural:

Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami. (neutral)
Bagi keluarga kami, asuransi kesehatan penting. (slight emphasis on “for our family”)

What is the difference between sehat and kesehatan?

They are related but not the same:

sehat = healthy (adjective)
- Dia sehat. = He/She is healthy.
- Makanan ini sehat. = This food is healthy.
kesehatan = health (noun)
- Kesehatan itu penting. = Health is important.
- Saya peduli dengan kesehatan anak-anak. = I care about the children’s health.

The pattern: ke- … -an often turns an adjective into a noun of the quality/state:

sehat → kesehatan (healthy → health)
tinggi → ketinggian (high → height / altitude)
penting → kepentingan (important → interest / concern)

So asuransi kesehatan is literally “insurance of health” → health insurance.

How would I say “Health insurance is very important for our family”?

You can add a word for “very” in front of penting:

Most common options:

sangat (formal–neutral, before the adjective)
- Asuransi kesehatan sangat penting bagi keluarga kami.
sekali (after the adjective)
- Asuransi kesehatan penting sekali bagi keluarga kami.

Both mean:

Health insurance is very important for our family.

Can I drop “kami” and just say “Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga”?

You can say it, but the meaning changes and may become unclear:

Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami.
→ Health insurance is important for our family.
Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga.
→ Health insurance is important for families / the family (in general).

Without kami, keluarga is not clearly “our family”; it sounds more general, like talking about families as a social unit.

If your intended meaning is specifically our family, you should keep kami:

✅ Asuransi kesehatan penting bagi keluarga kami.