Those who own an employer-offered health insurance plan might have seen a drop in the cover. Either the sum assured has been decreased or policyholders may ask to contribute a part of the premiums. Or, you may have to buy a separate mediclaim policy to cover your parents, for which you only need to pay the complete premium.
Companies are taking these few steps to decrease insurance rates. These moves might become more common because insurance companies in India increase premium costs.
Natural hike in healthcare prices due to medical inflation and the firm stand being taken by the IRDA are main reasons behind this increase. Recently, IRDA published rules on the pricing of risk.
IRDA wants insurers to estimate the likely cost of claims depending on their number in earlier years, coverage type, number of people covered and medical inflation rate. Insurers are yet to decide the premiums, but there is a probability that group health insurance premium could see little hike.
IRDA hopes that insurers should not burden their clients under any sustainable rates, in the name of too much competition. If policyholder reduces coverage, then cost will not increase. Basically, costs will continue to follow healthcare inflation.
When guidelines are applied by IRDA, there will be a benchmark as a beginning point for premiums depending on the loss ratio for the industry. Insurers not able to provide rates lower than the benchmark. It will result to increase in premiums.
Group mediclaim could be attributed to the fact that majority of insurance companies in India are in a book-building procedure during their initial operation years and hence, underwriting guidelines are lenient on costs.
Some non-preferred industries might have to pay more than they were compensating earlier for the same solution as insurance companies would be looking to make it a viable option to underwrite such businesses.
Generally, many employers already share premium costs with employees. When employee offers for the health insurance costs, is known as a contributory scheme. Some employers have shown the health insurance benefit as part of the employee benefit scheme.
Some employers at the inception of such plans deduct it as a mediclaim expense from their monthly salary. Apart from a basic mediclaim solution, employers may administer a separate policy for offering health coverage to the parents of employees.
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