PREETI KULKARNI, ET BUREAU
Group health insurance covers provided by employers are a great source of comfort for millions of employees. Such schemes typically pick up the hospital bills of employees and their family members. However,their utility value ranks the highest when it comes to the employees' elderly parents or inlaws . Generally, many health insurers dither from extending covers to senior citizens, as the likelihood of individual claims is quite high in this category. Even when they do, many senior citizens find the premiums to be beyond reasonable limits. Little wonder then, that employees treat employers' group health cover as a godsend.
However, last year, some companies and health insurers decided to impose ceilings on the benefits in order to control mounting losses in their health portfolios. In most cases, this took the form of introduction of the co-pay clause. A few organisations completely excluded the cover for parents, while some others transferred the cost (premium for parents' cover) to employees. "Last year, some companies had capped the benefits provided to employees' in terms of parental coverage and the trend continues this year as well," says Sanjay Datta, head, health insurance, ICICI Lombard. Adds Damien Marmion, CEO, Max Bupa: "Organisations are looking at managing their costs better. So, one of the ways for insurers to take care of both ends is to maintain the same costs, but revise their service offering.
