Health insurance checklist for your parents

There’s a very specific kind of financial laziness we at Ditto Insurance often notice when it comes to parents’ health insurance. Most people assume things are sorted on this front. A policy exists somewhere, premiums are getting paid, and parents have been renewing it for years. So naturally, everything must be fine.

Except… many of these policies were bought in a completely different India.

Back then, a cover worth a few lakhs sounded respectable. Hospital costs were lower, and what seemed like adequate health insurance 10 or 15 years ago may no longer be enough today.

A surgery, a few nights in the ICU, or a major hospitalisation can burn through an old policy cover surprisingly quickly.

And the sum insured is only one thing you need to worry about.

An older policy may also have a co-pay clause that requires you to bear part of every hospital bill, room-rent limits that can lead to deductions, disease-wise sub-limits that cap payouts for specific treatments, or weak restoration benefits if the cover gets exhausted during the year.

These are exactly the kinds of details people often discover only when they need to make a claim.

The problem is that most of us don’t really review our parents’ health insurance unless something goes wrong.

So if there’s one financial task worth doing this year, it’s probably revisiting your parents’ health insurance before life forces the conversation on you.

Pull out the policy document and ask a simple question: Can this policy handle one major hospitalisation in a good hospital in your city without leaving you with a large bill to pay yourself?

To make this easier, we’ve put together a practical checklist covering what you should look at—from the sum insured, co-payments and room-rent limits to restoration benefits, waiting periods, network hospitals, premiums, and whether it makes sense to stay with the existing policy, supplement it, port it, or buy a fresh one.

The video below walks through the checklist step by step. Do check it out.

If you’d like personalised, honest advice for your parents’ health insurance, you can book a free call with our expert advisors.