This story is from March 20, 2008

Easier health insurance policies soon

Arti Sharma / TNN / Mar 20, 2008, 00:31 IST

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Understanding your health insurance policy will become slightly easier after June 1 this year.

MUMBAI: Understanding your health insurance policy will become slightly easier after June 1 this year. In a bid to become customer friendly and transparent, the general insurance industry will adopt a common definition of pre-existing diseases across companies and policies.
Currently, pre-existing diseases are defined as excluded from the scope of cover if the insured person is aware of existence of the condition before buying the policy.This, however, has always been an area of dispute with insured person claiming he had no prior knowledge and the insurance company claiming otherwise.
The new definition clearly states what it means for a person to be aware of a pre-existing condition. K N Bhandari, secretary general, General Insurance Council, says,"The scope for interpretation is so wide in the present set up. But this new definition will hopefully eliminate any ambiguities and make the claims process more transparent for the customer as well as the companies."
Under the new definition, it has been decided that the standardised ��look-back�� period will be four years while the policy will be in force continuously. Any condition occurring after this period will be covered subsequently.

The new definition and other aspects of the changes have been put together by the health working committee and has been vetted by a team of health underwriters. The decision to adopt the definition and the look-back period from June 1 was taken at a recently held General Insurance Council meeting. The underwriters are still deciding the final details of allowing portability of policies.

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