Page 66 - Ebook health insurance IC27

The Insurance Times

covered by standard mediclaim policies. This could be due to exceeding of
the sum insured because of high costs involved, or there could be high
outpatient expenditure not covered under hospitalization insurance.

There could also be need for additional expenses like long term nursing care or
home based nursing care. Such expenses can thus be financially devastating to a
household where such critical illness occur. Usually these are benefit policies
providing a lump sum on diagnosis of a critical illness. They are available as
standalone products or as riders to life or nonlife policies, or as a component of a
packaged health insurance product.

They generally provide high sum insured amounts to cover the high costs of such
illnesses. Disease specific policy like Cancer Insurance policy, covers only cancer,
but is attractively priced for a high amount of cover. There arealso Critical Indemnity
products, which reimburse sum of the expenses instead of paying a lump sum, and
are obviously priced lower than the benefit policy.

(d) Daily Hospital Cash Benefit - There are various new hospitalization products
available which provide a Daily Hospital Cash benefit in the form of a fixed daily
allowance. It could be used to cover the incidental costs associated with
hospitalization ( like travel and stay cost of attendant ), or meeting the cost sharing
and inadmissible elements of hospitalization policies, which in itself may be a
substantial requirement.

Hospital cash plans are available as standalone policies, and also as an optical
component of some packaged health insurance policies. Thus, for example, where
the hospital indemnity product has a limit for the room rent, this money could be
used to avail a room with higher charge. Thus, at a nominal premium, this product

7 0 Guide for Health Insurance