Health insurance: Maternity plans cover expenses related to IVF, child adoption as well

livemint.com:

health insurance plan is indispensable to keep your sudden expenses in check. Be it an accident or hospitalisation, unanticipated medical bills can throw your financial planning out of gear. Add a child birth, the scenario remains similar but the distinction lies in the fact that it is neither an ‘accident’ nor an ‘illness.’ The insurers, therefore, treat this life situation quite differently and even impose a waiting period of two years or so before one can start to avail the maternity benefit.

And understandably so! It is a health insurance plan that covers all the expenses related to child birth up to a certain period. This means maternity insurance not only covers the delivery expenses, but also the cost incurred in prenatal and postnatal care. However, it varies from insurer to insurer.

One may opt for a standalone policy or buy it by paying extra premium as an add-on maternity cover. So, if you are geared to start a family and are seeking maternity benefits under your health insurance plan, be mindful of the following provisions of health insurance. 1.

Waiting period: Usually, conventional health insurance plans impose a two-year waiting period whereas a number of newly introduced plans offer reduced waiting periods of only 9 months. ALSO READ: Are maternity-related expenses covered under health insurance? “While traditional plans typically mandated a two-year waiting period or more, the newly introduced modern plans feature a significantly reduced waiting period of just nine months for first-time health insurance buyers," says Siddharth Singhal, Business Head, Health Insurance at Policybazaar.com. 2 Integrating with spouse’s policy: When one of the spouses has already subscribed to a policy, the nine-month