Health insurance to cover COVID-19; telemedical call enough for approval

With the threat of community transmission of COVID-19 looming large, everyone is wary of an impending rise in medical costs.

Health insurance firms have now announced that their policies will cover COVID-19, and to get a new policy, a physical checkup can be bypassed with a telemedical call.

Insurance portal Policybazaar.com has announced that all the top firms linked to it would be offering the telemedical facility for both health and term life insurance covers. “Policybazaar and top insurers are working to ramp up telemedical services with an increased volume of physicians and other health professionals,” the portal’s CBO, Life Insurance, Santosh Agarwal, told DH.

The health professionals will consult with the patients and assess their health condition over a call. The process, she said, is completely regulated by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).

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However, “if the customer disclosure is incorrect and it gets proven during the investigation, then the insurance company holds every right to completely decline the claim,” she added.

The questions by the doctor to the customer, she explained, will be very straightforward. “Questions such as what kind of medication, for what reason and for how long, whether the person has undergone any surgery in the past couple of months and years.”

It was observed that for the telemedical call facility, introduced last year for certain policies, the disclosure rate by the customer was much higher. “Customers are much truthful when talking directly to the doctors about their health conditions. Now, almost Rs 1 crore of health insurance and Rs 2 crore of term insurance can be bought through the telemedical facility.” The 21-day lockdown to avert a potential exponential rise of COVID-19 cases has brought telemedicine to the centre stage even outside the insurance sector.