With rising medical costs, people prefer to buy higher health insurance covers. Therefore, some insurance companies have started offering as high as Rs 50 lakhs or even Rs 1 crore health covers. But question is that whether you really need such high-value health insurance policies.
Apart from hospitalization costs, these high-value policies offers higher maternity, baby care, post-treatment, OPD and day-care procedure covers, insure organ donation and fund alternative treatments.
They also do not apply sub-limits on room rents. Some policies also cover treatment abroad and allow reinstatement of sum insured. However, premium for such plans is higher.
Experts say that Rs 20-25 lakhs cover is sufficient even if you wish to get treatment in the best of hospitals in metros. The entire sum insured doesn’t get utilized and high premium is wasted as not many claim for more than Rs 20 lakhs a year.
The biggest advantage of high-value covers is that international treatment is compensated. However, the list of ailments covered is restrictive. Usually, treatment abroad is covered for diseases like cancer, benign brain tumor, major organ/bone marrow transplant, heart valve replacement and coronary artery bypass graft. And overseas treatment claim is honored only if similar treatment is not available in India. These policies also have a higher co-payment clause for senior citizens at 20%.
Experts suggest instead of going for high-value health insurance policy, one can go for indemnity cover of Rs 5 lakhs and increase it as and when your requirement or responsibilities increase via a top-up plan.
Experts also suggest that one should review their health cover every three years and then decide to increase it or not. One can take a call based on increase in salary, family responsibility, and change in job profile and so on.
And if you are still planning to go abroad for specialized treatment, you could buy a fixed benefit policy like for critical illness, in combination with a regular hospitalization cover. You could also buy a high-sum insured critical illness plan and get the entire sum insured as lump sum.
[Source: https://www.policymantra.com/blog/are-high-value-health-covers-worth-buying-2/]