Are You Still Confused Between Health Insurance and Mediclaim Policy?

ARE YOU STILL CONFUSED BETWEEN HEALTH INSURANCE AND MEDICLAIM POLICY?

While assisting students going to US with education loans and student health insurance, we, at Student Cover, often find our clients using the terms ‘Health Insurance’ and ‘Mediclaim’ interchangeably. They seem to assume that the two are one and the same. And they are not entirely wrong either.

In this blog, we try to highlight the major differences between Health Insurance and mediclaim.

WHAT IS COMMON?

For starters, both health insurance and mediclaim are Insurance products providing cover for health related eventualities in return for a premium. They both are valid for a limited period of time and have to be renewed.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

Despite certain similarities, health insurance and mediclaim differ in a number of ways:

APPROACH TOWARDS HEALTH CARE

Mediclaim is designed to help meet expenses incurred when a person is hospitalized. It takes a reactive approach towards health and is generally confined to providing immediate relief instead of ensuring long term well-being of a person.

Health insurance on the other hand adopts a more holistic approach towards health and includes preventive health care and diagnosis in its policy.

COVERAGE

Both mediclaim and health insurance provide cover for medical emergencies but the latter also has provisions for pre- and post-hospitalization expenses such as ambulance charges, medicines, post hospitalization revisits to the doctor as well as regular health check-ups.

Health insurance also provides cover for critical illness due to diseases such as kidney failure, cancer, strokes etc. that mediclaim doesn’t provide. Health insurance plans also provide for compensation for any loss of income due to hospitalization.

POLICY AMOUNT

As said earlier, since the coverage of mediclaim is limited as compared to health insurance, the total policy amount for it is also less than health insurance. A mediclaim policy can provide cover for expenses upto Rs. 5 Lakhs.

The amount of health insurance policy on the other hand can go upto Rs. 6 crore.

REIMBURSEMENT TERMS

Mediclaim pays only the expense that is incurred during hospitalization so a person can make multiple claims for multiple hospitalizations within the policy period until the assured sum gets exhausted.

Health insurance on the other hand provides lump sum hence it can be claimed only once.

COSTS AND DISCOUNTS

Although the cost of both health insurance and mediclaim depend on a host of factors such as the age and health status of the policy holder and the total coverage amount, when it comes to getting discount on premium, health insurance buyers are at an advantage as they often get “no-claim bonus” for a succeeding year if the client does not make any claim on account of good health.

The mediclaim buyers on the other hand do not get such discounts from the Insurance service provider. This does not mean that clients cannot bargain with the insurance service provider at the time of purchase. At times, mediclaim agents help clients in getting attractive discounts on policies.