No, it’s not a flippant take on Shakespeare. When it comes to health insurance, this question is almost as troubling as the original.
There are two points in time when we ponder this question. Before taking health insurance for the first time and when, at renewal, the premium goes up sharply for various reasons.
What if one fails or forgets to renew health insurance? The process of getting coverage starts all over again. Depending on age, medical tests have to be submitted, any past credits are erased. That is, your waiting period for pre-existing conditions and certain specified procedures start all over again.
To top this, the insurer may load your premium for pre-existing diseases and even decline coverage!
Eternal consequences
When something proves too difficult, it is only human to try up to a point and then give up and live with the consequences.
A friend in his late sixties missed his renewal and finds that he cannot get efficient and reasonably priced insurance. Being clear about their financial position he and his wife are considering going without insurance.
He is making an assessment of some standard hospitalisation expenses so he can earmark investments to meet them. With this clear picture, he says, he can go without insurance. It is a thought process worth going through if renewing health insurance is this fraught.
The regulator has ironed out some wrinkles for continued coverage in the past. For example, a hospitalisation policy is eligible for lifelong renewal provided it is kept valid and there is no misrepresentation and so on.
This was mandated for a reason so that companies do not deny cover once a claim occurs or after a certain age. Having paid premium for years together, being bereft of cover in older years, which is when coverage is meaningful and imperative, is a tragedy.
But failure to renew by oversight or clerical error even, do not have a solution.
Companies seem to be okay with letting renewals go as an ageing customer represents a greater risk.
The irony is that my friend may just discover that his projection of expenses may match, or even be less than, the cumulative premium he has paid over the years!
That is the tipping point when the idea of insurance will become less relevant and insurers cannot sit back thinking it is a seller’s market.
(The writer is a business journalist specialising in insurance & corporate history)
