Health insurance plans are always been a necessity of the life. A while ago, to buy any plan or renew your existing plan was the herculean task.Even Renewal of it after certain age (say 58 or 60) was not possible. Nevertheless, after Oct.1, 2013 things had certainly changed. Come let us take note of those changes.
1) IRDA has made it compulsory for all the insurers that they should follow the standard definitions for commonly used terms in health insurance policies like critical illness, pre-authorization , list of excluded expenses in hospitalization. So that product standard will be equal across all insurers and none will not be cheated by hidden agendas of the companies.
2) Earlier renewal/buying of the health insurance policy after retirement were almost impossible. Now you can opt for health insurance until the age of 65 years. Not only that if you have any policy and wants to renew it further, then nothing to worry, as heath policies now are renewable for the life-time.However, remember that, this is not applicable to critical illness plan because as soon as you claim for the critical illness, plan terminates immediately after that.
3) As all the things related to health insurance product are standardized now.Loading on renewals is also standardized and is not based on individual policies. Besides that, it is obligatory for an insurer to settle the claim within 30 days after arrival of the last ‘necessary’ document.
4) Now days,15-day free-look period has been introduced. So , if you happened to buy a new policy then you will get extra 15 days to decide whether you still want to go with the product or not. If you think that product is not suitable for your needs then you can surrender the policy and get your cash back.
5) Earlier whenever premium due date was skipped, policy used to be terminated. However, in this area also some respite has arrived. 30 days grace period after premium due date is standardized now. Your policy will not be terminated until grace period gets over but you will not be covered by your policy during those days.
6) Suppose you have two health insurance policies and you need to make one claim only. Earlier it used to be very difficult to do that. Now, if you have 2/3 different policies from different insurers then also you can make entire claim with one of them.
7) And most important of all is that now Third party administrators will only process the claim but claim settlement /rejection will be done by insurers themselves. This has brought more transparency and clarity to entire procedure.
Not only IRDA’s strict norms and rules revamped the complete insurance industry but also its online look (which became possible only due to the sprawling internet facilities)has changed the complete scenario.Let us know something about that too.
8) Now days, you do not have to call and wait for agents. Instead you can visit websites of health insurance providers and go through every information provided about their products. Not only that, you can now compare two product of same category before stepping into buying of those products.
9) If you have made up your mind on any product then again you can go through the policy wordings of a product. You can even know about the coverage limits and other features like its renewal policy, grace period in case of default in premium payment, distinction between illness and critical illness, disabilities etc. After going through all these, buying is very simple, convenient-just few mouse clicks away.
10) Even if you have certain health condition and wants to opt for better insurance product. Now you can do that also! What you can do, you can just login to various websites. Check out their products.If you find any product suitable for your health conditions then demand its quote. Now you will be having at least three to four quotes for the same product from various companies .Choose the one, which is financially suitable for you!
So if you are still in to be or not to be stage then go on internet, search for the product suitable for your physical and financial conditions and go for it.Because it is never late for beginning of any good thing!
To take the right critical illness insurance, health insurance, life insurance and other investments, preparing a fundamentally strong, fool proof financial plan is required.
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