Millions of Indians lose their lives due to heart disease and diabetes every year. A report released by
World Health Organization (WHO) concludes this and sounds really alarming. It brings the importance of health insurance. For every individual living in the country, health insurance is a must. When an individual has an insurance policy, his policy provides coverage against expenses incurred due to hospitalization or any other medical procedure to treat bodily injuries caused due to any mishaps or accidents.
More over healthcare policies in India have started giving people faith in cure in the current generation. How Ever 82 percent of urban Indian population are yet unaware about their importance and do not have one. It is a general perception that health insurance premiums in India are expensive and higher when you grow old, although they are low when you are young. Some of the factors that impact the health insurance premiums will be discussed below.
Factors that affect health insurance premiums in India
The concept of buying health insurance in India is gradually improving and gain-ing momentum. How Ever it is important to learn about the factors that affect the premium costs and devise strategies how to pay less for your plan. While most of the plans are generic, while some are very specific, so before buying its always recommended to
compare health insurance plans in India. Here are some factors that affect your premium.
Age of the members – One of the factors which is taken into account while tak-ing health insurance is the potential age of the policy holder. In most states, the best rate for a plan is calculated using 21-year-old policy holders in mind. How Ever when the policy holder grows older, eventually the premium gets higher due to the risk that older adults are more prone to health complications when com-pared to young adults.
Coverage amount – When the cover amount is higher, eventually the policy holder will be entitled for bigger insurance premiums.
Number of members – When it comes to floater plan, the higher the members on the plan, the higher the premium. For instance when your cover amount is 10 lakh, if the number of the policy holder is single then the insurance premium will be less. Apparently when you want to share the plan either with your wife or other family members, then eventually the premium goes higher.
Health condition of the policy holder – When the policy holder has some life threatening disease or broken health, obviously the premiums will be more comparatively to the premium of the healthy individual.
Gender- Some insurance companies take this factor into consideration and of-fer lower premium rates for women as a sense of encouragement to make more investment.
Marital Status- Similar to the gender concept, some insurance agencies treat married people with a different premium than a single person.
These variables not only determine the health insurance premiums but rather carry the most weight. In addition to these factors, the health insurance premi-um in India does not remain stable and keeps fluctuating based on:
(1) Rate of GST – Goods and Service Tax generally changes the tax architecture between the state and center. This in turn will impact not only the insurance industries but the policy holder as well.
(2) Age Slab – It is a well-known fact that mortality rate differs based on age groups. So the health insurance premium depends on the age slab. The premium for age group between 18 to 35 remains the same. However older adults after 35 will have a revised version and slightly higher premium. Apparently for policy holders who are 45 and above, insurance premiums are considerably higher. So for many senior citizens who live on the pension, the increase is stiff and re-mains as a major concern.
In addition to these factors, health insurance premium has still increased in re-cent years. The industry stated that they increase the insurance premiums after inclusions of more diseases to their existing category. They justify that these inclusion like kidney and heart ailments, apart from cancer, will bring more add-ed benefits to the policy holders.
However the critical illness insurance policy covers only a specific list of diseases and will pay you lump sum if you have any other illness apart from this criterion. However many people survive for longer periods even with the diagnosis of these critical illnesses, yet they will not be entitled to any claim which is quite saddening. rnOne of the major public-sector companies in the insurance industry is New India Insurance.
rnIn their latest statement the chairman and Managing Director of the company, Mr G. Srinivasan said that the health insurance premium is still ex-pected to look for a raise. The company has already raised its premium for both individual policy holders and floated approximately 10 to 40 percent in the just ended financial year. With this increase, the company was able to compensate their loss from 125 percent to 103 percentage.
Other standalone insurance companies like Star health and Allied Insurance have launched policies (Star cancer care gold) even for cancer patients. This plan is applicable for policy holders who are in the age slab between 5 months to 65 years and diagnosed with first and second grade cancers. The plan covers for risk of reoccurrence, spread of the disease and for the treatment during the ma-lignancy stage.
Another
insurance company Bajaj Allianz have launched their new plans named “Extra care plus”. This policy acts as an additional cover to the existing health covers and provides for wider expenses related to maternity, pre 60 days to post 90 days hospitalization, emergency road ambulance cover and few other benefits.
However this waiting time is around 12 months. Since they could provide so much of comprehensive benefits to the policy holders, they have no choice rather increasing their critical illness insurance premiums.
rnMedical inflation in the country is approximately 15 percentage. So the cost of medical treatment is on the surge. Therefore people are on the verge of getting health insurance to cover the expenses and protect them financially during emergencies.