During the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, dearth of hospital beds forced quite a few critically-ill patients to keep back at home and seek therapy at home itself. To enable such patients, some hospitals even declared Covid home care package, exactly where patients had been offered doctors’ consultation, medicines and occasional care at home for a fixed price.
However, extremely couple of well being insurance coverage plans spend the expense of therapy at home beneath domiciliary therapy cover.
So, regardless of obtaining a well being insurance coverage cover, quite a few Covid patients ended up paying from their personal pocket the expense of therapy received at home due to unavailability of beds in hospitals.
To enable such patients, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has issued a statement permitting home therapy as an add-on cover.
But how advantageous will be the add-on cover be in comparison to the addition in premium?
“The IRDAI’s decision will now allow customers to add a Domiciliary cover to their base health policy as an add-on. It will allow customers to select a domiciliary cover without disturbing their base policy or having to wait for the next renewal. This a great initiative which will give flexibility to the insured,” mentioned Shankar Bali, Joint MD, Vidal Health.
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Although the information about the quantity of added premium for the add-on cover is not offered but, the add-on covers are normally less expensive than stand-alone policies.
However, there are doubts about the utility of such an add-on cover after the Covid-19 pandemic is more than.
Talking on the concern, Bali mentioned, “It’s true that the need for much wider reach of domiciliary cover was highlighted by Covid-19. It will benefit different customer segments and also hospitals in extending post-op care at home rather than in hospitals. I think this will have a long-term positive effect on the products.”
As some well being insurance coverage plans currently have in-constructed domiciliary therapy cover, what will be the influence of the choices on such plans?
“The IRDAI decision should not impact the policies with built-in domiciliary treatment cover. This proposal is to introduce add-on covers to the other existing policies,” mentioned Bali.