Avail health insurance by 30 years: Study

Hyderabad: Eight-five per cent of people believe that health insurance must be availed of at 30 years of age, according to a survey carried out in ten major cities. Seven lakh people were interviewed for the survey by the healthcare company - Indiafit.org 

Around 90 per cent of respondents believed that the healthcare system was deteriorating and was not patient centric and 67.8 per cent stated that they didn’t trust hospitals. Yet only 62.8 per cent had opted for a health insurance policy. Complicated conditions in the health policy and confusing terms used were found to be a major reason for not taking out health insurance despite knowing that it was necessary.

Sunder Rajan, an insurance advisor in the city, explained that the problem is that insurance executives in order to meet targets do not give the right information to the client. “This leads to disappointment during the time of hospitalisation. For this reason, the list of diseases covered is being given to people now so that they know for what insurance can be availed of and what is not included.” 

High premiums are another major deterrent. S. Ganeshan, who deals in insurance, said the premium for under 30 years of age works out to '3,000 to '6,000 a year depending on the type of policy. 

“But once the person crosses 40 years, the jump is as high as '10,000 to '15,000 a year. After 45 years of age, it further increases as the risk factor for diseases is very high. The insurance cover of '1 lakh is the lowest for a person opting for it and can go up to '10 or '15 lakhs as much as they want. The insurance premium increases after 40 years, 45, years, 50- years, 55 and 60 years as the disease burden increases. For an employee or businessman  shelling out the money every year till the lock in period is important, but many often lapse,” he said.

Mostly corporate employees and businessmen are found to opt for it as they can afford the high premiums. Premium can begin from '2,000 per year to '50,000 or even '1.5 lakh per year depending on the cover.

A welcome finding of the survey is that the number of people opting for exercise or fitness regimes has seen an increase from 22 per cent in 2017 to 33 per cent in 2018.