2) Health Insurance :-

Health Insurance or more popularly known as a Mediclaim is very essential insurance as hospitalization expenses are skyrocketing.

Health Insurance policy generally indemnifies an individual for expenses of treatment where minimum 24 hours hospitalization is required. The expenses being considered here include cost of treatment, operation, surgery, anaesthesia, implants, investigations, medicines, hospital accommodation, Pre & Post Hospitalization expenses etc. However, minimum 24 hours hospitalization is not required in case of listed Day Care procedures.

Customer should do due diligence in purchasing Health Insurance policy on the basis of waiting period for listed chronical diseases, Pre Existing Diseases, Maternity Benefit etc.

Also, selection of adequate sum insured is also very vital as most of the Health Insurance policies indemnify room charges up to 1% of sum insured per day for Normal Room & up to 2% of sum insured per day for admission in ICU. Not only that, but other medical expenses like doctor’s visiting fees, Operation Theatre charges, Operation fees, charges for Anaesthesia etc, will also be impacted proportionally if room charge exceeds specified limits. So it is advisable to buy a Health Insurance policy without such capping for room charges, medical procedures and proportionate reduction in claim amount.

Below mentioned Add on coverages or policies are also available in addition to conventional Health Insurance Policies:

[a] Top Up/ Super Top Up/ Deductible Policy :

This is a very popular supplementary Health Insurance Policy which should be purchased as a “Spare Wheel”.

It is generally considered costly to opt high sum insured and at the same time no one can plan for hospitalization expenses. Sometimes, such unplanned high expenses lead individual to become debt ridden by borrowing money at very high rate of interest due to life threatening situation.

A specially designed Health Insurance policy has a feature called Threshold limit or Deductible. Any claim amount if exceeding the threshold limit and admissible as per underwriting guideline is indemnified.

Now, the Threshold limit of such policy can be jumped either in a single claim or by way of aggregate of No. of claims in a policy year.

A policy which considers only single claim amount exceeding the Threshold limit is called Top Up policy. Probability of getting benefit from Top Up policy is comparatively less, henceforth not recommended.

The other type of policy which is called Super Top Up policy is worth to buy as probability of getting its benefit is reasonable. Here, aggregate value of all the claims of the insured exceeding the Threshold Limit triggers the claim under such policy. Super Top Up policy is very cost effective solution for opting High sum insured. General options for Super Top Policy are as mentioned below: Sum Insured – 3 lacs to 8 lacs for deductible 2 lacs, 7 lacs to 17 lacs for deductible 3 lacs, 5 lacs to 20 lacs for deductibles 5 lacs etc.

One should choose deductible in commensuration with his/ her primary health insurance policy.

Considering the tremendous pocket pulling rise in hospitalization expenses, we recommend to buy primary health insurance policy with minimum sum insured 5 lacs & Super Top Up policy of Sum insured minimum 10 lacs with reload or recharge benefit and deductible or threshold limit 5 lacs.

Proposal Forms, Claim forms and other documents of Health Insurance Policy of most of all Insurance Cos. can be obtained from Download Centre.

Please contact us for more detail and to determine which Health Insurance policy is the best solution for your need.

[b] Critical Illness Benefit Policy :

It is a Benefit policy and not indemnity policy which supports the insured by paying the lump sum amount not exceeding sum insured amount to support him / her for maintaining life style in case of any of listed critical illnesses like 1st heart Attack, Cancer etc. is diagnosed. This amount is paid only if insured remains alive for prefixed excess days, say 7/30/60/90 days after diagnosis of captioned critical illness. This type of policy is generally sold as a separate policy.

However, Some Health Insurance policies offer benefit of Double Sum Insured in case any of listed critical illnesses is diagnosed.

[c] Hospital Cash Benefit Policy:

It is also a benefit policy which supports the insured by paying lump sum amount as per policy for no. of days of hospitalization in excess of prefixed no. of days, say 3 days. The objective of this policy is to support the insured to meet incidental expenses incurred during hospitalization for expenses for fruits, conveyance, expenses for companion etc. which are not payable in a routine health insurance policy.