Money9 Edit | Covid-19 and insurance: No ifs and buts

The lack of hospital beds is posing terrible concern in the country given the scale of the spread of Covid-19 infection. The sheer absence of beds if forcing many to seek treatment at home. Unfortunately, when more and more patients are forced to settle for homecare, the insurance policy that they had purchased earlier might not cover cost of treatment at home. This is because many insurers are covering expenditure only as domiciliary hospitalisation provided it is either an in-built cover or an add-on cover in the health policy.

If you are lucky to have domiciliary treatment covered, then you have to look through exclusions, as many insurers have Upper Respiratory Tract Infection excluded from their policies. This means even after having domiciliary hospitalisation coverage, home care might be denied to you.

When Covid-19 has brought the health infrastructure to its knees and there are no hospital beds available, the domiciliary hospitalisation benefit is certainly not enough. The Covid-specific policies, which were launched by all insurers last year under the direction of IRDAI, cover home treatment but only a minuscule section of the population have these policies. The health penetration in the country is already extremely low at around 3%. Out of it most individuals have basic health insurance policy.

The need of the hour is that all health insurance policies should cover home care for patients who are getting treated at home due to the non-availability of beds. Home treatment should be covered under all policies without any condition. It should not limit the coverage to Covid-specific policies. The cost of ventilators and oxygen cylinders are not covered by insurance companies and patients are paying hefty and unfair premiums for these. The primary responsibility of insurance companies is to entertain claims without ifs and buts.