Recent covid recovered patients may not be eligible for health insurance immediately
Getting a health insurance after recovering from Covid may be quite a task as the insurance companies are adopting stringent underwriting norms for people recovering from covid-19.
Based on the health records, the insurers take a call on whether to accept or reject a proposal or even postpone it.
A recovered covid patient may also have to undergo some medical tests for the proposal.
Looking forward to have a health insurance cover post covid recovery? There are all the probabilities that you may not get it or may have to wait for as long as 6 months to have your proposal accepted.
The corona virus wave has made the insurance companies nervous and the uncertainty revolving this pandemic is so vast that the insurance companies are confused about accepting proposals of people who have recently recovered from covid-19.
Since the companies are not sure of the long term effect of this ‘disease’, they are taking different stances on people who have just turned negative. Some companies have a cool-off period of 3 months, some of 6 months and some have no cool-off period at all. Everything depends on the underwriting guidelines of an insurer.
The proposer must provide honest information about his covid history and submit all relevant documents such as discharge summary of the hospital and a report confirming that he is negative. After all the details have been filled in, the underwriter team comes back for fetching more details as per need and based on the health records, your proposal will either be accepted or rejected or even postponed. The recovered patient might have to undergo medical test as well.
"Medical tests will not be mandated just on the basis of a COVID-19 declaration. A customer is subjected to it depending on various factors such as age/sum insured opted for/ any pre-existing conditions etc. Having said that, insurers may further refine the tests that COVID recovered patients may be subjected to, if need be," says Sanjay Datta, Chief-Underwriting, Claims and Reinsurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance.
Star Health & Allied Insurance, which has no cool-off period for Covid-19, says insurance industry needs to be more inclusive to increase penetration of health insurance. "We have no special criteria to cover Covid-19 recovered patients. The problem is many insurance companies do not engage with qualified medical doctors in underwriting areas. Our underwriting team comprises a highly qualified expert panel. We have studied the data. We are convinced that without any compromise we are willing to cover people who were diagnosed with Covid-19. They just have to declare it and submit discharge summery," says Dr. S. Prakash, Managing Director, Star Health and Allied Insurance.
For recovered patients, if they have a history of COVID hospitalisation in the last three months or if they were home quarantined in the last 30 days, the waiting period is a minimum of three months," says Kamlesh Gupta, Appointed Actuary, Aegon Life Insurance. He further cautioned that one should maintain the medical records of the COVID diagnosis. As records for all tests and treatments are important to prove the Covid recovery for policy eligibility. "Also, it is important to maintain the COVID 19 vaccination details. Due to the uncertain nature of COVID 19, there can be additional medical tests required to rule out medical risks as required by the Underwriter," he says.
(The above details have been taken from authentic media sources)