#insurance One request that came "how to plan for health Insurance post retirement." 2 options. a. Plan well ahead of your retirement / when you call it a day. b. If your company has a Group Mediclaim, check with HR about porting.

Many health policies start imposing conditions once a person crosses 60. And most policies have a waiting period of for Pre-Existing Diseases from 2 to 4 years. If a person takes a policy when s/he is 53 to 54, then they will cross this waiting period time.

So ideally a person should consider taking a policy when he/she is 53 or 54. When a person takes a policy after 50 most companies will insist on a pre-medical check up. And if there are lifestyle medical conditions, either the premium will be bumped up or co-pay gets invoked.

The problem with co-pay is it gets invoked in all claims - that does not have to do anything with the lifestyle diseases. Even if a person is hospitalized due to accident, then also.

When we take a Health Insurance policy especially when we are 50+, we should aim to build a financial cushion that will take care of our finances should we get hospitalized. The purposes of Health Insurance is to take care of major hospitalization expenses.

So option a is to have an individual Health Insurance by the time one is 53 to 55 years old. What key factors to consider? Let me list: a. Current and future premiums. Companies that charge a lower premium today may charge higher premiums post 60 years. Or vice versa.

Check if there are any sub-limits or not for specific treatments / diseases. Also for room rent.

If there are limits on room rent be careful. Why? Because, if the policyholder takes a room that is charged at Rs. 2000 per day, when the eligibility is Rs. 1,000/- then the claim payable for cost incurred for treatment (excluding medicines) will be reduced in proportion.

In this case, as the eligibility is Rs. 1000/- but the Insured took a Rs. 2000/- room (even though the balance was being paid by the policyholder), and if the overall payable cost excluding medicines, comes to Rs. 50,000/-, then the policyholder will be given only Rs. 25,000/-

Recently, IRDA has amended the above condition more in favor of the policy holder.

Pre and post hospitalization expenses - provided by almost all companies varying from 30 days to 120 days.

Restoration / Recharge / Reinstatement of Sum Insured: There are some finer points surrounding this. Some companies restore the sum insured to its base amount once the sum insures is exhausted;

But then there are conditions surrounding this. This needs to be checked by the buyer of a policy. There are other conditions such as No Claim Bonus, Compassionate Travel, Annual Health Check up and like.

The other option: If your company has a Group Mediclaim Policy, IRDA has made a provision that you can port name from the Group policy to an individual policy with the same insurer. Benefit: You can get all the credit for the time you were member of the group.

Caveat: Your new policy will be subject to terms and conditions that were not applicable earlier and they may impose underwriting restrictions.

@Prasad - Hope I have given some pointers. #healthinsurance

Have written a broad set of pointers here. Specific points will be different for different folks depending on priorities.