When it comes to hospital stay, a good part of the expense is directly linked to room rent. With time the daily room expenses will go up manifold but your basic health insurance coverage will remain fixed. If you opt for higher room rent than what your base policy offers then these tied expenses will also go up proportionately and your out of pocket expenses will rise significantly despite a top-up plan.
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Let us use the example of a base policy with a sum insured of Rs 5 lakh and a Rs 10 lakh top-up, which takes the total coverage to Rs 15 lakh. The daily room rent limit covered by a good number of policies is around 1% of the sum insured. So, in this case, buying a top-up policy doesn’t mean that your daily room rental limit will automatically go up from Rs 5,000 in the base plan to Rs 15,000 after the top up.
“A top-up policy increases your coverage as a whole. You will be able to avail of the benefits according to the available limits in your base plan. In case of an expense, your base plan gets exhausted first,” says Naval Goel, Founder and CEO of PolicyX.Com, an online insurance seller.
This means you will get daily room rent coverage up to Rs 5,000 till the base plan coverage is exhausted. After that, the top-up will kick in and the room rent coverage will go up to Rs 10,000.
Sharing-room won’t be converted to private room
If your base plan mandates that you will only get a shared room, you cannot get a private room even after taking a top-up plan. “If a person is eligible only for a sharing room in the base policy, then the cover will be provided according to the policy ..
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