Yup! The false security that you have about your health insurance paying you in your hay day is only a dream.
So even though I took a great time researching our health insurance, we still got a shock.
We took Apollo Munich’s Health Insurance 3 yrs back.
The plan was Optima plus, where in if the insurance amount is 10 lakhs and its unused for 1st yr, the next yr, your insured amount doubles up to 20 lakhs. Hence in time of your need, you avail Rs 20 lakh worth health treatment.
Also if you have claimed for one disease this yr, you are immediately reinsured for other health treatments from next month without paying anything more till your next premium.
SO where is the catch?
The catch is in those very tiny fine lines that we never get to read before we buy the policy, nor will the agent every tell you or even want you to open and read it.
So let me tell you a secret, a rather dirty one about these insurance companies.
Their objective is to never pay you back!
The dirty trick may be one or all of these points after you have bought the policy:
- All diseases have a time period when it starts to show up or not to the final stage. They are aware of it. We are not. So if you go to them with a kidney disease, they know it takes say 3 yrs to come to failure stage. If you have taken a policy 3 yrs back and you were not aware of the disease, they assume that you have on purpose not informed them, hence you have connived in future surgery by taking their plan. So straight away they will refuse you surgery cover.
- There are a few diseases that take one, two or three years to come to surgery stage. If you have not read the insurance documents, you will be shocked to know that a lot of diseases are not covered till 3 years are over. So its best to go through a thorough health test, instead of a superficial one for your own good.
- Last point. They will say no first, whether you are right or not. Then they wait and respond only to those who pursue. They will not hand it down easily. You have to snatch it what is rightfully yours. Damn! Always!
So that’s what I did it last week. I sat for 2 hours at their office, talking to all possible people on phone and told them, unless, they found a solution for my problem I will not leave their office.
Then I retweeted all the dirty tweets of their past customers.
While I was thinking of getting their CEO’s number by tweeting to him directly, I was told that they have reached a decision. They will pay up the entire bill as it may come up to during and after surgery provided we signed that in future we will not claim for that same surgery again. We did that immediately.
By next morning we got the authorization of the going ahead with the surgery cashless at Apollo.