Medical Insurance in India

It’s that time of the year when I have to renew my medical insurance. I’ve had mediclaim policy for four years. But I am far from happy with the service. I stuck to public sector companies- first with National and then with Oriental Insurance thinking that they would atleast not ditch me when I need to make claims. In the current year, there were two hospitalization instances in my family- both clearly legitimate cases for claiming insurance. For my father, they rejected the claim citing diabetes as the ’cause’ and for my sister-in-law, they sent for clarifications twice for no plausible reason. Customer service, as such, is non-existent– no cashless TPA card, no renewal reminders.

This year, I am thinking of migrating the policies to another company. Unfortunately no company would provide new cover for my parents who are over 60, and I am not sure whether I could get continuation benefits if I migrate within the PSU General Insurance group. Many companies I talked to promised to provide continuation benefits to me and my wife. I am scared of the initial exclusion period if I move the policy.

I haven’t heard any first-hand experience with any company. I had taken overseas student policy from Bajal Allianz– it had reasonable terms and good customer service, but I did not have to make any claims. I searched the web (where else?) for any hints on service quality of Medical Insurance in India- Didn’t find much info except for these:

• http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2006/09/26/is-health-insurance-the-answer/
• http://www.irdaindia.org/

From the IRDA site, the offerings from these private companies look interesting:

• Royal Sundaram (http://www.royalsundaramalliance.com/)
• Cholamandalam MS (http://www.cholainsurance.com/)
• IFFCO Tokio (http://www.itgi.co.in/)

Anybody has experiences to share about medical insurance in India?