Health insurance becomes portable

If you are not satisfied with the services of your health insurer, don’t feel frustrated. Thanks to Health Insurance Portability, you would be able to switch to another health insurer from July 1 st onwards, without having to lose any of the benefits that your current health insurer provides.

Why Health Insurance Portability?
IRDA in its new regulation says “Persons shifting from one region to other regions are many times put to disadvantage due to lack of insurers’ office providing necessary policy servicing at the new location. Further, employees shifting from one organization to another organization many times lose health insurance cover due to lack of portability of the health insurance policies. It is essential to protect the policyholders against discontinuity and consequential loss of Pre Existing Diseases (PED) cover by making the health insurance plans portable across the insurance companies.” The portability will ensure that the policyholder is not...tied to one single insurer throughout his life for fear of losing the cover of PED. It will be implemented from 1 st July, this year. This means that come July, you can switch to any health insurer of your choice whenever you want.

Pre-existing diseases
Almost all health insurance companies have a defined “waiting period” of 30 days before you start getting cover for the pre-existing diseases. In the current scenario if you change your health insurer you need to again spend the “waiting period” with the new insurer. Policyholders who have chronic illnesses like cataract, hysterectomy etc often face a waiting period of 2 to 3 years. You would be able to “carry forward” the credit gained for pre-existing conditions in terms of waiting period you enjoyed with previous insurance company, as per the new portability guidelines. For example if under a previous policy, the condition was excluded...from coverage for two years and under a new plan with a different insurer the exclusion period for the same condition is three years, the new health insurance policy can only exclude the condition from coverage for one extra year Secured Sum Assured
You need not worry about the sum assured on the current policy if you choose to switch to another health insurer as “the accepting insurer shall provide insurance cover, at least up to the sum assured in the previous insurance policy”. It will be mandatory for the current insurer to provide all your records and claims history to the new insurer within 7 days. Sanjay Datta, Head Customer Service, Health and Motor, ICICI Lombard says, “portability will prove to be beneficial to the policyholders as they do not have to stick to one insurer but will rather have the option to move from one insurer to another without..