Hospital Cash
Hospital Cash: Coverage
ICICI Pru MediAssure - Does it measure up?
ICICI Pru MediAssurey is a good policy, but expensive. The price is likely to be revised once all non life companies react to the IRDA circular, which is when we can expect ICICI Pru Life to revise its price as well.
The general Insurance companies (National, New India, Oriental and United Insurance among the PSUs and ICICI Lombard, Bajaj Allainz General Insurance, Reliance General Insurance, Tata AIG, Star Health, Apollo DKV, etc. among the private sector) have been the only ones offering expense reimbursement polices for hospitalization which are more popularly known as mediclaim policies.
Companies offering health related policies (for some time now) hitherto used to fall in three broad categories:
Daily Hospital Cash allowance essentially an allowance for every day of hospitalization (or recuperation after the hospitalization in some cases). This is basically meant to cover the expenses incidental to hospitalization and not really for actual expenses incurred on hospitalization
Critical Illness Lump sum amounts payable on diagnosis of certain covered diseases/surgeries/treatments. Again all these are payable on happening of the event and not really dependent on what expenses you actually incur on the treatment of the disease.
ULIP linked plans having the above two products bundled with a regular ULIP plan.
Sudden hospitalization? Solution; Hospital Cash Benefit Rider
This benefit rider coupled with your life insurance will ensure that monetary issues do not bother you in event of unfortunate hospitalization for an ailment.
The Hospital Cash Benefit rider comes in handy when the insured has a sudden hospitalization on his/her hands. In the event of hospitalization during the term of the life insurance policy, a daily hospital cash amount is payable to the insured if she/he is hospitalized for more than two/three days due to any injury, sickness or disease. The amount of reimbursement could be a proportion of the room charge in hospital or the eligible daily hospital cash amount, whichever is lower.
Like the critical illness rider, insurance companies often have a maximum limit for the hospital cash benefit rider and a clause that states that benefits will be paid only if hospitalization occurs after two/three months of commencement of the policy.
If this benefit is claimed along with the critical illness rider, the insurance company may no longer offer the hospital cash benefit rider to the insured and further premiums for this rider then would not be applicable.