There are many who believe that cashless hospitalization facility available with medical insurance policies can be misused by hospitals and that it is better to pay cash and the reimburse it via the policy later. A discussion on should I use cashless hospitalization facility or pay and then reimburse? What does misuse mean? Attempting to exhaust the…

Every day, more and more people are waking up to a grim reality – their medical insurance costs are sky rocketing. In this post, I discuss practical and reliable ways to lower medical insurance costs with an important caveat – there is no free lunch (you need to give up some to get some). Announcement:…

Here is a list of ‘things to do’ after you buy a health insurance policy.  These simple steps would aid premium payment, claim application and hospitalization. This post is a companion piece to Things to do AFTER you take a term insurance policy! 1.  Understand claim procedures In the case of emergency hospitalisation and in the…

There are many who believe that cashless hospitalization facility available with medical insurance policies can be misused by hospitals and that it is better to pay cash and the reimburse it via the policy later. A discussion on should I use cashless hospitalization facility or pay and then reimburse? What does misuse mean? Attempting to exhaust the…

Here is a discussion on various types of insurance cover, like term insurance, health insurance, accident insurance and critical illness discussion. This is the video of Ashal’s forenoon talk at the 6th Bangalore Investing Workshop. For the first 1.5 hours of the workshop, the audience kept asking questions to Ashal about the above-mentioned insurance cover. The…

Last week, Mr. Srinivasan Sundarajan shared with us how he had converted his company group health insurance to a family floater as per IRDA’s portability rules.  In this follow-up post, he describes his experience after porting from the group cover to a family floater. I believe his account would be quite useful for anyone with or…

A question that is often asked is, “should I buy a personal health insurance policy if I have a company health cover?” The standard answer to this* was, “yes, you should, as you could lose the company cover at any time”. * The answer if often laced with conflict of interest as the guys who…

IRDA portability rules allow an individual to convert the group insurance cover offered by an employer to an individual policy from the same insurer. During the 6th Bangalore DIY investor meet (July 31st 2016), Mr. Srinivasan Sundarajan pointed out that he had made such a switch. When I requested him to recount his experience, pros and cons…

Here is a list of important terms, conditions and limitations to keep in mind before you decide to port your health insurance policy to another company. Come this September, health insurance portability would be 5 years old! Yet, it is not an easy process to shift a health cover from one insurance to another. It never…

Health insurance policies offered by banks in association with health insurers are game changers in terms of cost. However, the terms and conditions of these policies could be quite different from the individual health plan, or the floater health plan available directly from the insurance at a higher cost. Before you buy a group health…

Radhey Sharma* who blogs at The Wealth Wisher recently compared critical illness insurance policies in India. The following is an expansion of my comment to his post. * He used to. It is now run by Madhupan Krishna. What is CI insurance? It offers a lump sum if the insurer is convinced that an individual…

Here is an illustration of the most important factors  that we need to keep in mind while choosing health insurance. Health insurance policies are riddled with window dressing. That is, the features advertised by insurers are often tertiary or downright unnecessary while considering the purchase of a policy. I have written a guide on How to…

It is frustrating to see individuals having difficulty in choosing insurance policies – be it life, health or accident insurance. Their minds are cluttered with so many product features (some necessary and others not so) that they keep delaying the purchase. Here is a step-by-step guide to purchasing a health insurance policy. I am no…