How do you buy a health
insurance plan? If you just settle with the plan your agent sells or are happy
knowing you have bought the cheapest plan, there is a bit of unlearning and a
lot of learning in store for you. A health insurance policy packs in several features
and caveats. To give you a ready comparison, we designed Mint Mediclaim Ratings
(MMR), which was developed by Secure Now Insurance Broker Pvt. Ltd. The full
ratings along with the methodology can be seen here:.
In the ratings, for
family floater plans, we have considered two sum insured amounts (Rs.10 lakh and Rs.20 lakh) and three age
categories in each—eldest insured member is 35, 45 or 65 years old. For
individual plans, the age categories are the same but the sum assured is Rs.5 lakh.
The newest edition of
the ratings (January 2015) has a new category of individual plans of Rs.10 lakh for senior
citizens aged 70 years.
This week, we spotlight
policies for individuals with sum assured of Rs.5 lakh. We also explain some of the important
aspects that one should look at while choosing a policy.
Let’s look at no-claim
bonus. Health insurance plans are usually annual
contracts that you renew every year. Each year you can make a claim on your
policy up till the sum insured. The insurer would prefer if you didn’t make a
claim and, therefore, would reward a no-claim year by, usually, increasing your
sum insured for free. Keep in mind that an increase in sum insured does not
alter any other features of the policy. So, if there is co-pay or sub-limits in
the policy, the same would apply even on the increased sum insured.
Insurers, typically,
increase the sum insured by 5% every year up to a maximum of 50%, but if
you make a claim, it
could proportionately decrease the extra sum insured. But the base sum
assured doesn’t get
reduced. No-claim bonus is nice to have as it could also serve as a cushion
against inflation. But given that medical inflation is over 10%, an increase of
5% may not be sufficient. In MMR, no-claim bonus has been assigned a weightage
of 7.5%.
Source from : http://www.livemint.com/Money/Luj1sMRpBTvZrJ5PovwqnK/Best-health-insurance-policies-for-you.html
