Health insurers widen cover with feature-rich policies

General insurance companies are giving a makeover to their health insurance plans by covering more than just hospitalisation expenses.

General insurers have come up with comprehensive policies that will cover, besides hospitalisation reimbursement, pre-hospitalisation expenses such as out-patient department and wellness services.

Further, these companies are also providing additional features in health insurance policies such as Worldwide Emergency Cover, disease- specific covers, value-added services in the form of discounts, health maintenance benefits and consultation charges for second opinion.

A senior official with a public sector general insurance company said, “The idea behind launching feature-rich policies is to bridge the gap between the total cost of healthcare incurred and the amount covered by health insurance.”

Conventional insurance Tapan Singhel, MD and CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, said conventional health insurance policies, especially the hospitalisation reimbursement category that exists in the market today, have been restrictive in terms of coverage.

After assessing the latent demand for all-inclusive health insurance covers, Bajaj Allianz recently launched a comprehensive health insurance plan providing coverage for hospitalisation treatments and also includes maternity, OPD and dental treatment.

Health insurance industry in India is intensely competitive with 23 general insurance companies and five standalone health insurance companies.

CIGNA TTK, the newest standalone health insurer, plans to leverage the global health service expertise of US-based Cigna to focus on wellness-oriented health insurance products to act as a differentiator, said MD and CEO Sandeep Patel. Other insurers have launched specialised disease-centric policies which will cover pre-existing diseases without any waiting period.

For instance, Star Health Insurance’s Diabetes Safe Plan, covers complications arising out of diabetes from day one.

Many health insurance policies in the market today have a waiting period of 4 years for covering any pre-existing illness.

In 2012, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) introduced health insurance regulations which standardised terms in health insurance policies to reduce ambiguity. Data from the insurance regulator shows that during 2012-13, complaints relating to health insurance dropped 33 per cent to 30,278 from 45132 in 2011-12.

Segar Sampathkumar, General Manager of New India Assurance, said the regulations have defined and brought transparency across health insurance policies in the industry.

Under the health insurance regulations, it is mandatory for health insurers to provide alternative treatments such as AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy).

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