PRE-EXISTING HEALTH CONDITION: MYTHS, RULES AND REALITY

Last month, a friend told me she had missed renewing her health insurance.

- KAPIL MEHTA

Because of the break—and her past cancer diagnosis—the insurer refused to renew her cover. A decade ago, many dismissed health insurance as unnecessary or unreliable. That thinking has changed as medical inflation has surged and insurance has helped millions.Today, the biggest concern is getting insured after a health diagnosis—and it shouldn’t be. Insurers now routinely cover people with adverse health conditions, recording them as “preexisting health conditions.” But what does that term really mean?

Standardized in 2020

There was a time when every insurer had their own definition of 'preexisting condition’, some so elastic that any claim could be dismissed. This changed in 2020, when the regulator defined this phrase and asked insurers to consistently follow its definition. It was now mandated that the disease should have been diagnosed or treated not more than three years before buying insurance. That put an end to scrambling for your childhood medical records. It also said you should have been diagnosed with an ailment for it to be considered a preexisting condition.

A frequent query from those suffering chronic ailments such as hypertension, high cholesterol or thyroid disorders is: How much do I disclose? The underlying concern is that they may not be given insurance if they are completely honest. That is not true.