Max Bupa Health Assurance: Perfect Product for Senior Citizens

Very often we came across complain from senior citizens that there are not a single mediclaim product in market which renew their mediclaim policy throughout life time. Case-to-case renewal after 70 years is done at complete discretion of the insurer. They have often denied from a personal accident and critical illness policy when they really needed. Today I have read an article in Moneylife email and they have written about the product with an option of lifelong renewal. It is good product and I want to share it with all of you.

Max Bupa Health Assurance is a product with lifelong renewal, a demand that addresses the core need of senior citizens who were refused renewal of personal accident (PA) policy after age of 70, ostensibly due to increased possibility of accidents at an older age.
 

Critical illness is another product which excludes customers as early as 50 years; some policies run till age 60 years. Again, critical illness like first heart attack, stroke, paralysis, cancer is likely to strike more after age 60 years—the time when the product is unavailable for customers to cover their risk. Max Bupa Critical Illness cover is a reasonably priced product covering wide range of illnesses with lifelong renewal benefit.

Max Bupa Health Assurance offers a combination of three health covers—PA, Critical Illness and Hospital Cash, with an option to choose all or any of the three covers. The product can be bought between 18-65 years; PA and Hospital Cash are offered to children from age 2-21 years.  The premium for PA cover is same for ages 18-65 years. According to Sevantika Bhandari, Director-Marketing, “For customers above 65 years of age, the premium for PA cover will vary. We are offering PA, Critical Illness and Hospital Cash under Health Assurance with life-long renewal. In fact, we were the first in the industry to introduce the option of life-long renewal with the launch of our flagship product Heartbeat (Mediclaim) in 2010.”
 

Here are also the pros and cons:

Advantages – 
 • Reasonable premium at Rs780 for Rs5 lakh cover for ages 18-65 years. You can get PA policy in the range of Rs500 to Rs800 for same cover, but the Max Bupa product also covers child education benefit of 5% of the Sum Insured (SI) or Rs50,000 per child, whichever is lower and funeral expenses of Rs5,000 in case of accidental death
 

• Maximum entry age is 65 years. Life-long renewal is a welcome step, but it does come at a little price. 

Disadvantages – 
 • The product only covers accidental death, permanent total disability (PTD) and permanent partial disability (PPD). Temporary total disability (TTD) is a good optional feature available in many PA Product, but is missing in the Max Bupa offering. TTD usually pays 1% of the SI for 100 weeks in case of disability preventing one from going to work.
 

• The list specified for PPD is not comprehensive. It does not cover for loss of fingers, smell, taste, and so on. A general statement like “any other permanent partial disability—percentage as assessed by the doctor”, which is present in many PA products would have helped. 

Critical Illness is a good product considering the following pros and cons:
 

Advantages – 

 • Lifelong renewal
 • 20 critical illnesses like cancer, first heart attack, stroke, paralysis, major burns, coma,        kidney failure, open chest coronary artery bypass surgery, etc are covered
 • Floater option is available for two adults
 • Very reasonable premium at Rs752, Rs2436, Rs13465 for Rs3 lakh cover (age 27, 42 and 65 respectively)
 • Pre-existing coverage offered after four years of continuous coverage. Most critical illness products do not cover pre-existing diseases
 

Disadvantages – 
 • 90 days of waiting period and 30 days of survival period for the policy to pay. Some critical illness products in the market cover with zero survival period

Regards,

Arvind Trivedi

Certified Financial Planner

arvind.trivedi79@gmail.com