Covid brought home the importance of having adequate health insurance coverage. While many have employer-provided health cover, that is unlikely to be sufficient.
Even otherwise, it helps to have a personal health cover in addition to a corporate health cover that protects you even after you leave your job. Typically, it makes sense to have a health insurance policy that provides you cover equalling at least one time your annual income. If you are not adequately covered, you can consider buying for a top-up health plan.
Maulik Madhu of Moneycontrol spoke with Abhishek Bondia, Principal Officer and Managing Director at SecureNow.in on how health top-up policies work and whether they deserve a place in your protection portfolio.
SecureNow.in is a tech-enabled insurance broking firm that was co-founded by Kapil Mehta and Abhishek Bondia in 2011. The firm provides insurance coverage solutions and claims support to its clients, primarily corporates.
Here are the key points that Bondia highlighted:
1. A top-up plan can help you enhance your insurance coverage without tweaking your existing regular health policy (base plan).
2. For someone with no health insurance, taking a base plan and a top-up plan can turn out to be more cost effective than relying solely on a base plan.
3. Unlike a regular health plan, top-up plans come with deductibles. That is, there is a certain amount that the policyholder has to bear before the insurance company starts footing the medical bill.
4. Deductibles can be of two types – one where the deductible limit is applied to each and every claim, and another, where it is applied to the aggregate of all claims in a year. The latter is more favourable to the policyholder.
5. Apart from deductibles, there are no other differences between a regular health policy and a top-up plan.
6. If your employer provides a health insurance cover, try to enhance the sum insured by buying a top-up before going for a personal base, or full-fledged, health cover.
7. A retail top-up health plan is subject to waiting periods but under a corporate health cover, your claims get covered right from the start.
8. You do not need to buy a top-up plan from the same insurer from who you purchased your regular health policy
9. In fact, you can buy a top-up plan even if you do not have a regular health cover.
10. If you have more than one health plan, you can split a claim across all these different policies at your discretion.
