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Business News/ Money / Calculators/  Product crack: Max Bupa Heartbeat Health Insurance Plan
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Product crack: Max Bupa Heartbeat Health Insurance Plan

This is a new version of an existing health insurance policy

Pradeep Gaur/MintPremium
Pradeep Gaur/Mint

This is a new version of an existing health insurance policy. Like a typical health insurance plan, this is primarily an indemnity policy that pays for hospitalization expenses along with expenses before and after hospitalisation.

What do I get?

The plan comes in three broad variants: silver (up to 3 lakh sum insured), gold (up to 50 lakh) and platinum (up to 1 crore). A cover of 1 crore is among the highest that health insurance plans offer. These variants also have a Family First floater option that covers up to 14 relationships. In this, the insured first needs to choose individual covers, and then a floater cover. Then there are variant specific features.

The silver plan doesn’t have many unique features, but one of the biggest benefits in the gold and the platinum variants is that there is only a two-year waiting period on pre-existing ailments, against the industry norm of four years. Even for some specified ailments that most policies don’t cover for the first two years, the exclusion period in this policy is only for the first 90 days in all of its variants.

What’s new?

The platinum version covers emergency hospitalization abroad for a fixed sum, but for 9 critical illnesses, the cover goes all the way up to the sum insured on a cashless basis (though you have to pay extra to include US and Canada). The outpatient department benefit allows reimbursements including homeopathy, allopathy and Ayurveda treatments.

All the three versions have a new loyalty programme option. The older avatar of the policy offered reward points only equal of 10% of the annual premium, which you could use to buy health products and services from the insurer’s website. In the new programme, every year on renewal, you can increase the sum insured by 10%, up to a maximum of 50%. This increase comes for free and, unlike other policies, is agnostic of your claims status.

For senior citizens, the insurer has offered tapering co-pay. This means that if you buy this policy at 65 years of age, you need to pay 20% of the claim amount in that year. This co-pay reduces by 5% every year. So, after the fourth year, you don’t co-pay at all. If you buy this plan at 63, you don’t co-pay till 65 years of age. Then, at 65 years, you co-pay only 10%. By 67, you don’t co-pay at all. The insurer has, however, hiked the premiums by 5-10%—the highest has been in the silver version. Existing policyholders will need to move to the new version at the time of renewal.

Mint Money take

For individuals, this plan is expensive. But if you want extra features such as low waiting period and insurance for all daycare procedures, you can consider it. For the Family First option, premiums are more competitive. For instance, a 35-year-old with a family of four (33-year-old spouse and two children below five years) would pay a premium of 29,820 for an individual cover of 3 lakh each and floater of 10 lakh. A similar cover in the market could cost about 37,000.

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Published: 12 Aug 2014, 07:39 PM IST
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