Is your corporate health insurance enough?

The resounding answer from my recent experience is a NO!!

Lots of people think that the insurance that their companies give them are enough for their medical coverages for a lifetime. A four lakh family floater plan sounds really good and hence there is never any real reason to get any more cover.

I have just come out from an health experience - a heart surgery and luckily though i had a 3 lakh cover, i still needed to shell out another lakh from my pocket to cover a angioplasty with just one stent ( can you imagine that a stent actually costs around 128000 rs??


As we have a family and also grow older the probability of getting admitted in the hospital with more complicated and costly diseases is much more.

Now lets do a quick calculation.

An angioplasty will cost anywhere between 4-5 lakhs for around two stents. If you do have this, your insurance is completely gone for a year for your family- if your insurance has just started. This is usually the limit to which you have company covered insurance ( dont forget the 10% copay that every company now has).

So the above calculation give you an instance of how your insurance coverage is really not enough.

So how much is really enough?

I think for a family of three to four- around six lakhs ( without any co pay) is decent.


Now i would suggest a little bit of strategy of how you buy the insurance. Buy it in tranches... Maybe six months apart.. This way even if you have a admission, you will not suddenly have a gap of no insurance.

Lets take a quick example

1. Four lakhs starting on jan first.
2. Two lakhs starting june first.

So at any point of time, you have six lakhs of insurance. Now if you get admitted and spend around 5 lakhs in february.. You now have taken away all of your insurance from 1. And around a lakh from 2. So in february, you have only one lakh of insurance left.

Now as soon as you hit june.. This will jump back to two lakhs because of the fact that it gets regenerated .

If you can have an equal distribution.. Nothing like it.

So the entire post is actually about the fact that you need to ensure you have the right leelof health insurance and not depend only on your company insurance. If you do have your spouse working... Take the entire coverage- then it may not be an issue


Now if you can ensure you buy from a company which gives you money back ( eg amway tie up with royal sundaram).. Even better

Take a note.. Its simplefinancialsense

QUICK UPDATE ON Health Insurance- Dont take company policy for granted-

I was going through the economic times and just ran through this article... again on the issue of health insurance...

good to go through this post also.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/8033798.cms

Health Insurance- Dont take company policy for granted

Just recently, a friend of mine went through terrible times trying to get cashless insurance done for his hospitalization. He had a company health insurance policy. He finally had to shell out a lakh from his pocket and then go through the reimbursement route.

Hopefully , in the next 3-4 months he will be able to get the money reimbursed from the health insurance company.

While Health insurance is a good coverage that one gets from their company , it should not be taken as a granted facility. Usually, companies have a push that they can do with the insurance company to try and get the money approved faster ( because of the large volume of premiums that they pay), however there are always some cons with every Pro's.

Here are some cons.

• The insurance coverage is always applicable till the time you are working with the company, Anytime you leave the company and till the time you join the next company, there is a period where you and your family are not covered by insurance-- this is very risky!
• Companies are moving to a co-pay facility to help reduce insurance costs. Co pay means that the employee would need to pay a certain percentage of the overall costs ( say 20%) in case of hospitalization.This helps reduce the abnormal charges the hospital may charge the insurance companies as the patient is "covered by insurance". However this increases the liabilities onto you.
• As you retire , getting a health insurance becomes more costly and becomes more difficult to get. A lot of your pre existing diseases may not be covered. It is best to have an insurance plan right from the beginning.
• If there is an issue of reimbursement, one cannot go to the ombudsperson since the insurer is the company. The company may not want to get its name raked into a case. In this case the employee is the loser.

While this is definately a benefit that the employee gets- it is not something that we should be relying on totally.

A separate insurance policy makes sense. A floater policy covering your entire family.

Get going.. get yourself insured.

Happy investing

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( photos taken from freedigitalphotos.net)

Health Insurance a must

I know that most people will say that their companies have the health insurance covered for themselves and their families ( like i do).
However it is a must to consider the following

• The entire insurance claim is not covered. A lot of companies have a co pay inbuilt into the insurance plan- like my company has me pay 20% of the overall value of the claim
• Parents are usually not covered at certain levels.
• As age increases the insurance premium also increases since the risk of health issues increases
• Beyond a certain age, most health insurers don't insure someone- like it is not possible to get insurance for my parents today

Now- dont get me wrong- its not as if someone who is 24 yrs old needs to buy a new policy even if he is covered by his/her employer. However , as one becomes more than 35- it definately makes sense to do so.

Please spend the time to go through some health policies- I am presently in favour of looking at the religare health policy to understand the features better.

As i go through some of the policies , i will write what i understand are their terms and conditions.

Happy investing

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