Health insurance has turned out to be something nobody can bat an eyelid at, in today’s world. The cost of healthcare and the sprawling growth of life-oriented diseases have raised the need for complete health insurance to provide financial security and a sure-shot peace of mind. There are quite a few health insurance companies offering their policies in India, making it really cumbersome to decide on the best.
Let me outline the top 5 health insurance providers in India, respecting their services and benefits and why they remain unrivaled in the competitive health insurance market.
1. Star Health and Allied Insurance
Star Health and Allied Insurance Company is one of the most trusted names when it comes to health insurance in India. Although this company was established in the year 2006, within this short period, it has managed to gain a strong foothold amply by concentrating only on health insurance and providing excellent customer service.
Key Features:
- Types of Policies: Star Health health insurance plans target individuals, families, and senior citizens. Their policy also covers critical illnesses, maternity benefits, and COVID-19 treatment.
- Cashless Hospital Network: Facility of cashless treatment in more than 12,000 network hospitals across the country.
- No Pre-Insurance Medical Test: For granting policies, no pre-medical test is required for people below 50 years of age.
- Lifetime Renewability: Star Health allows lifetime renewability for most of its products to ensure coverage in the long run.
- Customer Service: Star Health arguably has the smoothest claim-settlement process and one of the highest claim-settlement ratios, hence you can trust this company to be there for you in your hour of distress.
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2. Max Bupa Health Insurance
Known earlier by the brand name Max Bupa Health Insurance, this company is very reputed for its customer-oriented approach and innovative health insurance products. The company is a joint venture between Max India and Bupa, a UK-based healthcare services expert.
Some Key Features:
- No Upper Age Limit: The most attractive feature of Max Bupa is that there is no upper age limit to buy health insurance from them.
- Direct Claim Settlement: Unlike most other companies dependent upon TPAs, Max Bupa manages claims directly; hence, it can accelerate the process of settlement.
- International Cover: Very few policies cover international cover, in fact for frequent travelers or people who want some specialized treatments abroad.
- Comprehensive plans: Max Bupa covers all the expenses related to Hospitalisation, maternity benefits, and Critical Illnesses including day-care procedures, and cashless treatments.
- Wellness Programs: It also covers wellness through fitness rewards and health check-up benefits.
3. HDFC ERGO Health Insurance Formerly Apollo Munich
HDFC ERGO is amongst the leading health insurance providers in the country which was formed after the acquisition of Apollo Munich Health Insurance by HDFC. Such a merger brought together expertise from both companies in their services with a prime focus on customer needs for health insurance.
Key Features:
- Reasonable Plans: HDFC ERGO offers reasonable premium quotes with a wide variety of policies, hence making them affordable to the larger section of the population.
- Cashless Hospital Network: The insurer has a list of over 10,000 impaneled hospitals for cashless treatment.
- Pre-Existing Diseases/Diseases Cover: HDFC ERGO covers pre-existing diseases after the cooling-off period, thus providing continuity in health insurance even for those policyholders suffering from long-run health issues.
- Range of Policies: It offers individual and family floater plans, critical illness cover, maternity cover, and wellness programs.
- Customer Support: With its hassle-free claim settlement process, HDFC ERGO has always marked a high claim settlement ratio.
4. ICICI Lombard General Insurance
ICICI Lombard is considered one of the major private sector general insurance companies in India, with a sound portfolio consisting of health insurance products. The health insurance provided by them is customized and their customer support services are excellent.
Key Features:
The customizable plans amply empower the policyholder in terms of the selection of their policies, especially with respect to the eligibility criteria for certain illnesses, maternity benefits, and family health insurance. The added advantage in flexibility is provided by ICICI Lombard in the following aspects.
- Cashless Network: With over 6,500 network hospitals, ICICI Lombard has an enormous network of cashless treatment facilities across India.
- Comprehensive Benefits: It covers the expenses against pre and post-hospitalization, day-care treatments, ambulance charges, and critical illness care.
- Wellness Programme: The policyholder can collect wellness points for maintaining a healthy lifestyle and use them to earn rewards or discounts on premiums.
- Round-the-Clock Customer Support: ICICI Lombard offers 24×7 customer support to make sure the policyholder gets assistance at any time.
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5. Religare Health Insurance (now known as Care Health Insurance)
The rebranding of erstwhile Religare Health Insurance to Care Health Insurance in view of new sets of innovative products and customer-centric policy provisions enabled it to take rapid strides in the health insurance market.
Key Features:
- Varieties of Plans: Care health insurance is available for a wide range of health insurance policies. These are available as individual, family, and critical illness plans amongst many others. This list further goes on to include senior citizens.
- Maternity and Newborn Coverage: Almost all policies provided by the company include proper maternity benefits, and the cover for the newborn baby is automatically included as per those. High Coverage Amounts: Care Health Insurance provides a high sum insured under its policy to amply cover policyholders in case of major medical coverage and expenses.
- Free Health Check-ups: Annual health check-ups for policyholders are provided without any extra cost in order to promote health prevention among the policyholders themselves.
- E-support: Care health insurance has an easy-to-operate mobile application that allows one to maintain the policy, claim, and health monitoring.
Role of Aapkapolicywala in Health Insurance
Aapkapolicywala will guide and assist you in acquiring the best health policy that serves your needs. An online insurance aggregator, we provide a platform whereby you may compare policies from top health insurance companies in India. It makes everything quite easy in that it gives customers the avenue to:
- Premium and Coverage Comparison: Aapkapolicywala gives a chance to compare different health insurance policies based on payable premiums, coverages, and exclusions for one to reach a decision.
- Expert Advice: The several years of experience in the insurance business at Aapkapolicywala present personal advice through its advisory team toward the selection of the right health plan for individuals and their families.
- Seamless Purchase: The web portal, Aapkapolicywala.com, will help the applicants to purchase the health insurance policy by guiding them through the whole process of making the purchase smooth and seamless.
- Claim Assistance: Further, Aapkapolicywala also extends post-purchase support to customers in assisting them in the settlement of claims and facilitates the release of the benefit amount without undue delays.
Aapkapolicywala collaborates with the best health insurance companies only. They add value to the services so that users can get the best available option to handle health insurance policies more effectively.
Conclusion
The choice of the correct health insurance company is considered one of the major decisions in your life, and it will affect a lot in your financial security as well as your well-being. Among the insurance companies in India, five providers stand tall in terms of providing comprehensive coverage, robust customer support, and innovative services. These are Star Health and Allied Insurance, Max Bupa Health Insurance, HDFC ERGO Health Insurance, ICICI Lombard, and Care Health Insurance. One should consider these insurers and their benefits for the purpose of weighting accordingly. He can select from the best health insurance policy from portals like Aapkapolicywala that fit his requirements and look forward to peace of mind for himself and his family.