Do you have enough Health Insurance?
Recently, I met someone who said he ended up paying R12 lakh out of pocket in spite of having Health (Mediclaim) Cover of R15 lakh. He clarified that he got a near full payout from his insurer but the bill he ran up at the hospital was of R27 lakh hence requiring him to fork out the balance from his own pocket which required him to delve into the investments he had made for his retirement corpus.
His is not an isolated case. Most Indians rest secure in the erroneous belief that they have adequate health cover without comprehending how sharply hospitalisation costs in India have escalated.
With abysmal health insurance penetration across India, even as medical costs are escalating vertically, the additional disposable income likely to find its way to taxpayers post an expansion of the taxable income limit, should hopefully spur many more of them to widen their health insurance cover closer to today’s ground realities as far as hospitalisation costs are concerned.
For those who remain skeptical of the need for higher health insurance or for that matter, even basic health insurance, there is enough anecdotal evidence of how the hospitalisation bills of several patients have reportedly started running into several lakhs of rupees. Even those who had a relatively high health insurance cover found themselves having to pay out of pocket once the cover was exhausted.
At the other end of the spectrum, having learnt of the misfortune of the gentleman I referred to at the start of my column, one of our clients took a serious re-look at his existing Health Insurance Cover and increased his existing Cover which suddenly seemed woefully inadequate which also facilitated a multi-fold expansion in his base cover. As a matter of extreme prudence, he also chose a Top Up at a marginal cost from another private player that his wife had her base cover with.
He did it vice versa for his wife and now rests assured that his wife and he are, in fact, more than adequately covered for this life-time. Several of our clients too are now in the process of increasing their Health Insurance Cover having been educated about the importance of the right quantum of cover.
While there seems to be better awareness about the need for adequate Health Cover, the tendency to defer acting on it till it is too late remains. That amounts to gross negligence, especially on the part of those who can afford it. By delaying action, one is potentially putting oneself and by default, one’s family at high monetary risk that could manifest at the most inopportune moment.
Thus, there is a very strong case for those without Health Insurance Cover to get one immediately and for those with existing cover to have it reviewed by an expert at the earliest and topped up to a limit commensurate with estimated medical treatment costs.
Ashok Kumar
Head of LKW-India. He can be reached at ceolotus@hotmail.com
(Views expressed here are personal)