

Base plan isn’t enough: How top-up insurance protects you from medical catastrophe
₹6,818 is what it cost me to increase our family health cover from ₹20 lakh to ₹5 crore using a top-up policy. We are in our mid-50s with two children in their 20s.This is, by a large margin, the most cost-effective way to increase your health cover.
Few financial products allow you to increase protection 25 times for the price of a meal out.This is why I often advocate top-up insurance—sometimes also called super top-ups—to friends and family. Think of base insurance as first-loss protection and top-ups as catastrophic illness cover.The questions I am asked most often are: Why is the top-up so cheap? How does one claim? Are there regulatory safeguards? Are there exclusions? How should one buy a top-up?Here are the answers.
The top-up plans that I refer to in this column are those where the deductible applies to total annual claims, not per hospitalization.Top-ups are cost-effective because of the deductible.The deductible is the portion of medical expenses that you must bear before the top-up policy begins to pay. Having a deductible lowers the cost.
The larger the deductible, the lower the premium.The initial expenses can be borne by another insurance—say your base health cover—or paid by you. The insurer is not concerned about who pays the initial expenses, only that the expenses have been incurred.Deductibles significantly reduce premiums because, for most policyholders, health care costs will fall within the deductible amount.
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