Health insurance: What The New ‘Cashless Anywhere’ Initiative Entails

A key advantage of health insurance is the benefit of cashless claim settlement when a policyholder is admitted to a hospital for treatment — whether it is planned or emergency-driven. Cashless treatment is generally allowed by insurers when admitted in their empanelled or network hospitals.

But late this January, the General Insurance Council rolled out a new initiative called ‘cashless anywhere’ that allowed insurers to settle claims even when treatment is taken in non-network hospitals.

When there is a large list of network hospitals provided by any insurer, will anyone prefer a non-network hospital? Consider a few situations. What if

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Health insurance for 65-plus doesn’t address the key issue of affordability

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has lifted the age ceiling of 65 years on purchasing a health insurance policy. It has advised insurance companies to offer health insurance products to all age groups, including senior citizens, covering all types of existing medical conditions.

Earlier, in a 2016 notification, the IRDAI had set an entry age of ‘at least up to 65 years’ for insurance companies to provide health insurance cover. Although there was no bar to sell health insurance policies to those over 65, only a handful of insurers sold health policies to first-time buyers beyond

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What is keeping Indians away from health insurance?

Higher premiums and lack of urgency along with high complexity are the prime reasons for many Indians not buying health insurance, find a survey on the trend among insurance buyers in India.

Lack of affordability, higher premiums, difficulty in understanding health insurance clauses, and insufficient funds, emerged as the main obstruction for people who are willing to buy health insurance, according to the policybazaar.com’s report, titled ‘How India buys Insurance’.

As per the survey, 43 per cent of all the respondents who didn’t take any health insurance cited high premiums as the main reason for not doing so. Out of

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