The situation on the Health Insurance claim payment front has deteriorated significantly over the last few months. While everybody is aware about the turf war which is going on between IRDA and SEBI over ULIPs, only consumers who have the misfortune to fall sick and get hospitalized are realizing the significant issues with claim settlements on mediclaim plans.

Let me narrate my own personal experience to illustrate the point.

I had the misfortune to slip and fall at home as a result of which I was advised minimally invasive surgery to repair a tear in the shoulder sometime in mid December 2009. I was smug at the fact that I had adequate medical insurance and hence I would at least not have to worry about the hospitalization expenses. My first shock was when the doctor hiked the estimates for the procedure after finding out that I had medical insurance. It was only when I refused to pay anything additional and threatened to shift to another doctor that wiser counsels prevailed and he agreed to abide by the original estimate of around Rs. 2 lakhs. The second shock came when I realized that this very reputable hospital had blacklisted all TPAs/Insurance companies and I would have to pay the bill first and seek reimbursement from the insurance company later. On enquiry I learnt this was because of the bad experience that the hospital had with TPAs (as well as Insurance companies) who delayed payment even after providing approval for cashless settlement.

The last shock was reserved for when I put in my claim with the TPA for reimbursement of the expenses that I had incurred. Firstly the TPA allotted by my insurance company had given a 1-800 telephone number, which was never picked up. So for any queries I had to send a messenger over. The people at the TPA were extremely rude to my staff that went personally to their office for enquiries. I was at a wits end as to the status of my claim when I discovered, almost by accident, that the TPA had an online status check facility (this facility is not advertised anywhere in the policy documents). I began checking the status on the website on a constant basis and hence was able to find out, in early Jan 2010, that the TPA had raised several queries including requiring a copy of the FIR filed for the accident (who on earth files a FIR for a slipping incident at home) and a copy of the indoor case papers of the hospital. This query was only updated online and I have yet to receive the actual physical letter containing the query. In any case I got together all the documents and submitted them in mid-January 2010. After that it took them almost 4 weeks (they updated the approval on the site yesterday) to approve my claim after making some nonsensical deductions. To enable you to judge the merit of these deductions here is a sample list of what they have deducted - Rs. 100 for shaving (they have claimed it is for head shaving though no where in the bill is it mentioned as head shaving – it was actually chest and shoulder shaving to prepare for the operation) and Rs. 200/- warming blanket – used in the operation theatre where the temperature is kept very low thus necessitating the use of this disposable blanket which is filled with warm air to keep the patient warm. I know the amount of deduction is extremely small and hence I do not plan to contest them but the pettiness really rankles. Again true to form I have learnt all this from their online status site. I now anticipate a struggle to get the actual cheque for the approved claim.

So what are my learnings from this episode?

Firstly the health care industry (especially the larger hospitals) is clearly a law unto itself. With a tremendous shortage of quality health care facilities they clearly have no push factors for pricing the services reasonably for their consumers (yes patients are also consumers after all). In fact, but for a few notable exceptions, most of them possibly see an easy money making opportunity when they are treating an insured patient. The absence of competition ensures that patients have a Hobson’s choice in terms of medical personnel and hospitals and the ability of even large Insurance companies to lay down some standard payment systems is very poor. The hospitals and doctors off course have their own woes with the health insurance industry. Ambiguous terms attached to cashless pre-approvals mean that the hospital is not sure if the payment will actually come or not. Secondly there are very long delays in payment even after a claim is admitted and approved.

Off course some players in the health insurance industry contribute their own share to the consumer’s woe by denying/reducing claims on flimsy grounds, delay in decision making, etc. to make this a very hassle some process for consumers.

The health insurance industry also re-acts by pushing the onus on to the poor patients (sub limits, co-pay requirements, etc) who are the grass that gets trampled upon between this fight between a two elephants (the health care industry and its relatively tinier counterpart - the health Insurance industry).

Given the fact that public spending on health insurance as a percentage of the total healthcare spends in India is one of the lowest in the world, the health insurance industry has a very important role to play in ensuring the availability of quality health care to the population.

It might be interesting to see the history of the stand off between the health care and the health insurance industry. There had been stand off between TPA (Third Party Administrator) and Hospitals, few years ago after which IR DA and others had intervened to set up an arrangement which had been working reasonably well till about 6-9 months ago. This is when the arrangement broke down again, especially where handling is done by TPAs. A large number of very reputed hospitals have refused to entertain cashless approvals by TPAs and now the whole sector is crying out for the urgent intervention of Government authorities.

The lack of standardized charges among the health care sector is the biggest impediment to the spread of health insurance in India. In fact the lack of standardization in so rampant that charges for consumables particularly expensive ones like stents vary from patient to patient. In fact charges may vary considerably for the same procedure in a similar room class depending on whether the patient is insured or not. The question here is why can these charges vary from patient to patient in this manner. The health care sector clearly has a lot to answer, and the Government’s recent move to accredit hospitals and to have standardization in some of the charge structure is most welcome and needs to be implemented with full speed.

IRDA also needs to intervene to make sure that similar standardization happens in the health insurance industry to make sure that the newly acquired confidence of the health insurance customer does not dip significantly.

Till both these events happen the consumers have no other choice but to grin and bear it.

I hope Finance Minister comes up with some proposition on this when he gets up to present the budget next Friday. After all health is an important service for the “aam aadmi”.

Please write to me about your own experiences with Health insurance as well as any counter points to this article.

Last Friday my friend Hemant Mishra approached me with a problem, which may sound mundane, but it caused lot of trauma to my friend, courtesy insurance company.

Acting on my advice, he bought a term insurance policy as I always thought it was important even though he had an impressive profile – age 42, decent income, good savings, low debt, high placed professional in an MNC bank and to top it all a fitness buff. Based on this I had recommended him an amount which ran into crores as sum assured.

So I was surprised on receiving a call when an anxious Hemant who told me that there was a problem with respect to his term insurance policy.

Let me share Hemant’s account with you.

His Insurance agent had started the process under which made Hemant filled up the form, paid the premium followed by a battery of medical tests. Given the size of the policy, he had to answer quite a few questions from the Insurance company, besides visit to his office by insurance company’s personnel. The process was smoothly completed and it was time for him to receive the policy. Here comes the real shocker, when the insurance company informed Hemant that they would be charging an extra premium. Reason? quipped Hemant. He was informed that there were some issues with his medical reports, hence he would be required to pay extra charge to get the policy and insurance company wanted his approval in the matter.

At this point Hemant was more anxious to know what were these exact health related issues. Now comes the real twist. When he asked for his medical reports from the insurance company, he was informed that his medical reports were their property and cannot be divulged. He was aghast at this response

Now he was far more anxious to know about the health related issue in his medical report rather than the insurance policy itself.

When he mentioned this to me, I made the research team at ApnaPaisa to do a quick check on the practices followed by the various Insurance companies in disclosing the medical reports to the insured person. They informed that most companies will provide a photocopy of the medical reports on request to the consumer, whereas one . insurance company was willing to provide the copies only to the family doctor named in the Insurance proposal form. But the company chosen by my friend was an exception which did not provide the reports to the insured at all.

A quick check on the Insurance Act showed that Section 51 of the Insurance Act, 1938 requires that Insurance company should supply the “Policy Holder” the medical reports.

So legally speaking Hemant was entitled to a copy of all his medical report after paying a princely sum of Re. One, Once he became a policy holder which means he paid the extra premium and took the policy. After he got his policy he would be in a position to get the medical reports.

In case the Company still refused to give him the medical report, he could file an official complaint on the Insurance company’s website. In case that did not elicit any response he would have no choice but to file a complaint with the Insurance ombudsman or the alternative grievance redressal mechanism of IRDA (details on www.irdaindia.org).

By this time Hemant ( and his wife) were frantic with worry and so decided to repeat all the tests at his cost as he did not want to wait for the Insurance company to react to his request. I asked them not to worry too much as it was very unlikely that there would be anything seriously wrong in his report. Otherwise the Insurance company (or its re-insurers) would have clearly declined to issue the policy rather than just charged an extra premium. I asked him to follow up with the Insurance company after he took the policy since those reports would also serve as a very useful checking point against any reports that he would obtain on his own.

It is indeed sad that Hemant had to go through this distressing experience due to the policies of that specific insurance company.

Let’s hope other consumers are spared such an experience in the future.

We are being asked this question so often at Apna Paisa, especially from government and Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) employees, that we thought this merits a full-fledged article.

A lot of employers are able to provide cover for the entire family including parents and some of them are also able to provide coverage for pre-existing diseases. As a large premium payer, the employer is able to drive a hard bargain with various insurance companies especially when they (the employees) are willing to bundle the profitable asset protection policies from the same insurance company. This is changing now as group Mediclaim has not been very profitable for the insurance companies and with the de-tarrifing of the asset protection policies, the cross-subsidization of the group Mediclaim losses with the profits from the asset protection policies has stopped.

In a meeting with Mr. Anthony Jacob, CEO, Apollo DKV, the topic of group insurance cropped up. I would like to share his views in my column, Mr. Jacob says “ Group health insurance is not an exciting propositions for us. It is under priced so it just does not make sense for a company like us. Even if we invested lot of time, money and other resources then also we will not be able to cover our costs. So how long can we keep investing if corporates do not pay fair price to us”.

Anyways, so why should you ever consider taking an individual Mediclaim policy if you are already covered by your employers group policy?

The reasons could be as under:

1) The employer’s cover may not be available for all members of the family dependent on you especially for parents

2) More importantly the maximum cover available per family member may be low especially considering the ever increasing cost of medical treatment in India

3) Third and most important, the cover will cease if you have to leave the job for professional reasons. At that point it may be difficult for you to get a cover for you (or your family member) if any of you or your family member has developed a disease in the meanwhile.

4) Group Mediclaim, as mentioned earlier is not profitable for the insurance companies as a result of which premiums may rise. To keep the premium payments within reasonable bounds in today’s tough times, the employers will therefore be forced to either accept lower value covers or accept other limitations on the covers that may limit the ability to make some claims on the policies. This is an area where developments are still happening and can have adverse impact on the medical coverage for you and your family.

So clearly it makes sense to take Mediclaim cover for yourself and your family members on your own as well apart from the employer provided cover. This is as true for government/PSU employees as it is for the private sector employees. In any case a reasonably adequate independent coverage for your parents is an absolute must.

But what if you have adequate medical cover from the employer and are convinced that it will not charge to your detriment in the future and also you are not planning to leave the jobs till retirement.

In such cases we get questions what can be done to take advantage of the separate tax deduction available for medical policies under section 80D.

First the decision on taking a medical cover should not be driven by tax considerations alone. Tax breaks only serve to make the cover cheaper. But if the only consideration driving you to take a medical cover is tax break and you are loath to buy additional Mediclaim cover then you should definitely look at two specific medical policies:

1) Critical illness policies that will give you a lump sum payment irrespective of actual expenses if you suffer from any of the covered illnesses. This will take care of catastrophe diseases that affect your ability to earn (see earlier article http://www.apnainsurance.com/critical-illness-insurance-india/Why-is-Critical-Illness-policy-imortant-where-to-buy.html)

2) A Medical Ulip plan to enable you to pay for future medical expenses by investing in a tax deductible plan today. For this you have a choice between LIC Health Plus or Reliance Health Wealth Plan and or ICICI Prudential Life Health Saver.

So to conclude it makes sense to buy a medical cover yourself even if your employer provides you group cover. In any case you should consider the option to buy Critical illness cover or health ULIP plans.

The Life Insurance Council has decided to standardize the formula to calculate charges linked to ULIPS (Unit Linked Insurance Plan). This reform just comes after the big bang reform of abolishment of the entry load in the Mutual Fund.

Behind these announcements is the ongoing struggle between life insurance companies and mutual funds.

A mutual fund is a professionally managed type of collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors and invests it in stocks, bonds, short-term money market instruments, and/or other securities.

The ulip scheme is a mixture of investment and insurance. ULIPs scheme is like a wayward chicken which doesn’t stick to one place . It’s policy value at any time varies according to the value of the underlying assets at the time.

However, this distinction has blurred over the last few years. Indeed, one gets a feeling the life insurance companies are also in the business of running mutual funds, categorised somewhat differently as unit-linked insurance plans (ULIPs).

Round one-The reforms will put ULIPs in higher pedestrian compared to Mutual Fund.

The insurance agents gets more commission for selling ULIPs schemes. Hence the marketing of ULIPs is on much larger scale which in turn hampers the sale of Mutual Funds. This has given ULIPs a headstart and is doing very well in comparison to the Mutual Funds.

The abolishment of the entry load will discourage the distributors and agents to sell Mutual Fund, since it has completely vanished their revenue stream.

In ULIPs, the agent’s commission varies, but in the first year, it could be as high as 25% and more. This

has definitely put ULIPs in the higher pedestrian and agents will be more than eager to sell the product. In round one ULIPs has clearly taken a lead and entry load abolishment has hurt mutual fund a lot.

Next is the issue of transparency.

There is a vast difference between the meaning of net asset value (NAV) of ULIPs and mutual funds.

In a mutual fund, the NAV announced is net of all expenses and charges the fund company deducts. If your investments were worth Rs 1 lakh when a fund’s NAV was Rs 22, then it will be worth Rs 2 lakh when the fund’s NAV is Rs 44. That’s it.

The arithmetic of insurance companies is different. NAVs of ULIPs are effectively pre-deductions. The NAV may double, but your investments won’t double because the insurance company will reduce the number of units you hold to pay for expenses and commissions etc. This means the announced NAV has no clear and transparent relation to what the unit holders are actually earning.

The Round two- The knockout punch-Ulips to be simplified , standarised.

The new reform of simplifying ULIPs and standardizing the formula to calculate charges linked to ULIPs going to be the game changer for this ULIPs vs Mutual Fund war.

This reform will be the knockout punch for the Mutual Fund. The standardization of the ULIPs charges will make it easier for the consumer to compare the ULIP plans and this will the last armour that ULIPs needs.

The round two - ULIPs wins by a heavy lead.

In the battle of ULIPs vs Mutual Funds, ULIPs has a clear advantage after this two big bang reforms, but it’s still early days to rule out Mutual funds. They can raised up to this challenge and emerge as a winner.

A friend recently told me he had taken my advise and had bought a term insurance policy for Rs. 50 lacs for a premium of only Rs. 800/- p.m. even though he was only 30 years old and in good health. He felt very satisfied that he had made adequate provision for his family in case of his untimely death. When I enquired if he had also taken the critical illness policy as we had discussed last time he replied in the negative. When I asked him for the reason he said it was a very expensive policy (costing around Rs. 1500/- per month for a cover of Rs. 50 lacs) and since he already had a mediclaim policy he had decided against buying the critical illness policy.

I had to spend more time with my friend to explain to him why a mediclaim policy is not a substitute to a critical illness policy and also why the critical illness policy is relatively more expensive.

I informed my friend that he had done a great job in buying peace of mind by taking an adequate (for him) value life insurance policy. I reminded him about the fate of a common friend of ours who had suffered from paralytic stroke. He had survived due to some excellent treatment by the doctors and was now expected to lead a semi-normal life though his speech and the functioning of the left side of the body was still affected. While he was being treated however he had lost his job and was finding it very difficult to get another job given his circumstances. He and his family were now financially dependent on his brother. I explained to him that whilst our common friends’ mediclaim policy had paid for the hospital expenditure, he had nothing to fall back on now for his day to day living requirements. Although he was saved from actual death, the paralytic stroke had bought “financial death” to our common friend. Since a life insurance policy only pays on actual death it is the critical illness policy that pays on such occasions (organ failure, cancer, paralytic stroke, etc.) that bring “financial death” to a person. Ideally the critical illness cover should at least be the same as your life insurance cover.

My friend then asked me the reason why the critical illness policy was so expensive. I had to explain to him that insurance works on probabilities. The probability of him dying before the tenure of the policy was much less as compared to the probability of his contracting one of the critical illness policies during the tenure of the critical illness policy.

I think all this convinced my friend about the “critical” need for a critical illness policy. His next question was “where do I buy it from”. Now critical illness policy is either available as a rider on top of a Life Insurance policy or as a separate stand alone policy from the non life (general) insurance companies. The issue with buying it as a rider from life insurance companies is that you need to buy it only it at the time of buying your life cover. Also adequate Critical illness cover is not available through this route as the premium on all riders put together cannot exceed 30% of the premium for the base policy. Since the critical illness rider is more expensive than even the basic life cover you cannot really get adequate critical illness cover through this route. Which means you will need to turn to the non-life companies to get adequate “critical illness cover”. IRDAs recent circulars have also taken care of the earlier problem with this route as renewal of the policy now cannot be denied except on grounds of fraud, moral hazard or misrepresentation and the non life company also has to indicate in advance about the maximum age up to which the policy is renewable and the premiums chargeable at different age levels at today’s rates. This making it almost like a long term life insurance policy except that the premiums can be increased with the prior approval of IRDA in later years if it has been indicated that such future premiums are not guaranteed.

I also asked him to check out the critical illness policy comparator on www.apnapaisa.com before deciding whom to buy the policy from. My friend was happy for all the unpaid (J J) free advise given by me and resolved to buy the critical illness policy within the next week itself.

My friend has made the right decision. What about you????

The new Policy from United India Insurance is a good idea. Now only it’s own offices knew where the application forms are available.

http://www.apnainsurance.com/health-insurance-india/super-top-up.html

Today there is an increased awareness about healthcare costs and mediclaim insurance that helps mitigate the risk of such costs. One question for the first time buyer is whether to take individual insurance polices for each family member or a family floater policy.

Before we look at the pros and cons of each type let us quickly look at what each of these policies mean. An individual policy means a separate policy for each of the family members. That means if in a family of 3 members, each of the family member is covered for Rs. 2,00,000/- and the hospitalization expenses for a particular.  member is Rs. 3,00,000/- then only Rs. 2,00,000/- will be reimbursed. In contrast in a family floater plan the limit can be utilized by any of the family member. If the same family takes a family floater plan for Rs. 4,00,000 then under similar circumstances the full amount of Rs. 3,00,000 will be fully reimbursed. So in many ways the family floater plan offers flexibility in terms of utilizing the overall insurance coverage among the family as a group. This would seem to indicate that a floater plan is always more beneficial for a family. However there are several other considerations that need to be taken into account before taking this decision. We have used some examples to understand this better.

Given below is a table for the cost of an individual insurance policy for 2 typical families from Star Health (This company has been chosen at random since it offers both Individual policies and Family Floater policies and has very similar policy wordings for both individuals as well as family floater policy and hence any comparison will be on a like to like basis).

We then tried to find out the value of a family floater policy that they will get for about the same amount of premium. And we found that the older family would be able to get a family floater plan for Rs. 4,00,000 at almost the same cost (Rs. 13,092 as compared to Rs. 13,106 for the individual policies). The younger family fares much better with a family floater policy of Rs. 5,00,000 available at a much lower cost (Rs. 6,998 instead of Rs. 7,776 for individual policies).

As you can see for the older family for the same amount of premium the family floater plan doubles the amount available for each family member (Rs. 4 lacs from Rs. 2 lacs) while halving the overall family cover (Rs. 4 lacs from Rs. 8 lacs). For the younger family the flexibility is increased dramatically (Rs. 5 lacs from Rs. 2 lacs) without a significant impact on the overall family cover (Rs. 5 lacs from Rs. 6 lacs) and with money saved to boot. The reason for this is not far to seek. The family floater plans are priced on the basis of the age of the senior most member and as he/she gets older the flexibility decreases and/or the cost increases significantly.

There are other disadvantages to a family floater policy as well. The policy will be renewed only till the senior most member reaches the maximum age of renewability allowed by that company. As it stands today, at that stage, the other family members will need to take a fresh policy without having the benefit of their claim history and pre-existing disease coverage that comes from continuous renewal of the policy. The same thing applies to children who reach the maximum age (normally 25 years in most cases) after which they will need to buy a separate policy for themselves without the benefit of the earlier continuous coverage that they have got under the family floater policy. Most policies also make no specific provision for continuing cover of the surviving members in case of the unfortunate death of the senior most member.

All in all since continuous coverage and claim history is critical in this category and currently there does not seem to be any stated basis for taking these with you when you are forced out of a family floater plan we would strongly recommend taking individual policies for the whole family.

It’s that time of the year again when wishes are horses (well almost). Imagination (and hope) runs high . Well here is my wishlist for Mr. Mukherjee.

http://www.apnaloan.com/prebudget-wishlist.html

Health care costs for hospitalization in India have risen sharply in recent years in tandem with global trends. Many a family has seen their financial planning go for a complete toss due to unexpected costs on hospitalization of a family member. Also due to increasing exposure to media there is a far bigger consciousness about medical insurance. In fact the biggest question asked to us by first time mediclaim buyers is which is the cheapest mediclaim policy?

Unfortunately if this is the only parameter used by a consumer he is likely to end up making a wrong choice. An example will illustrate this point:

If you have diabetes, would you (all other things being the same) rather buy a mediclaim policy that may be a little more expensive but will immediately cover the hospitalization expenses arising from complications connected with this disease (heart problems, kidney or eye problems associated with diabetes) without considering them as pre-existing disease rather than a comparatively cheaper policy which treats all such diseases as pre-existing and hence not immediately coverable.

The following paragraphs lays down the broad parameters apart from premium which you must compare before you buy:

1) Pre-existing disease: This is probably the most important parameter. The relevance is because if a disease is treated as pre-existing then the policy normally provides no coverage or very restricted coverage for expenditure incurred due to that disease in the immediate future. The various things to be considered under this head are

a. Definition of Pre-existing disease: Most policies provide that any disease that was present at any time in the past (including any disease which the insured person may not have been aware of) is treated as pre-existing. But some have a narrower definition, which may extend to only diseases for which the insured person had sought consultation for or was treated for or he was aware of during say the last 4 years. The narrower the definition the better it is for the consumer

b. After how many years of continuous coverage by the company will the pre-existing disease get covered: This is important as after the expiry of the cooling off period even pre-existing diseases get covered. A fine point is to find out if the company you are considering allows your track record of continuous coverage from another insurance company for the purpose of calculating this cooling off period or insists only on continuous coverage with itself for this purpose.

c. Special dispensation for diabetes/hypertension: Diabetes and hypertension have acquired epidemic status in India with one estimate putting the figure at around 5% of India’s population. Also a host of illnesses/diseases such as heart disease, kidney failure, paralysis, stroke, eye problems can trace their root cause to either diabetes or hypertension or both. Since the definition of pre-existing illness includes any complications arising there from, this has been a major reason for disputes between the mediclaim providers and the consumers in the past. Now some insurers provide immediate coverage for at least complications arising from this (ese) disease(s) even though expenses on treating the main disease itself may not be covered. If you already have diabetes/hyper tension then this is a vital consideration for you. Off course it comes at an additional cost and may also involve pre-acceptance medical tests. All these factors need to be taken into account before taking a decision.

2) Sub- limits: Sub limits mean where the overall coverage is broken down into the maximum payable for a particular kind of expense. For eg. A few insurance companies now provide that room rent cannot exceed 1% of the covered amount or that doctors/consultants fees cannot exceed 20 or 25% of the covered amount. Whilst most of these sub-limits are reasonable it is better to take a decision after being aware of them.

3) Co-Pay requirements: Quite a few companies now require that the insured bear a certain percentage of the eligible expenses either unconditionally or under certain conditions. This is called a co-pay requirement. Some companies provide a discount in premium if you agree to co-pay. Some others might want a co-pay if you choose to get treated in a non network hospital or others may have a co-pay for choosing a single air conditioned room or for getting treated in a hospital in a higher cost city. The co-pay feature is built in to ensure that the insured chooses the appropriate hospital/room/doctor level relevant to his economic status and also watches the reasonableness of the charges levied by the hospital to ensure that there is no overspend or overcharge just because of the existence of the mediclaim policy. Again there is nothing inherently unfair about this provision as long as you take a conscious decision after being aware of it.

4) Specific Exclusions: Almost all policies have general exclusions such as costs incurred for Aids/Sexually transmitted diseases or congenital diseases, etc. However some policies have specific exclusions that may be relevant to you.

5) Maximum Coverage Amount: This is important, as a particular policy that suits you may not be available for the amount of coverage that you seek.

6) Maximum age at entry: This is relevant for senior citizens as quite a few policies may not be available to them.

7) Renewability upto what age: This is relevant for senior citizens as well as people in their 50s since they need to be able to enjoy the benefit of their track record

This is not a comprehensive list of parameters by far. Each policy may have specific positive or negative features that may be relevant to you such as restricted coverage for angioplasties or certain other kind of treatments or features such as free diagnostic tests offered after a certain number of claim free years, etc.

Now presumably it is far clearer why you need to study the policy features rather than just buy the cheapest policy available. The parameters listed have been summarized in the accompanying table.

In the next article in this series I will cover the debate on whether to go in for individual policies or for a family floater policy.

So best of luck with your hunt for the most suitable mediclaim policy.

In case you wondered why Indian Hospitals charge more for doctors fees, operation charges, etc. if you stay in the first class rather then their more economical classes. And how is the Indian insurance industry re-acting to these practices

http://www.apnainsurance.com/health-insurance-india/first-class-is-second-class.html