The pandemic has acted as a major catalyst to fuel the adoption of group health insurance (GHI) with parental covers among companies. These are either fully employer sponsored covers or voluntary parental covers wherein the decision to opt for parental covers rests with the employees, according to a report by Plum, an employee health insurance platform.
The report says that 30 per cent of its clients have parental covers as part of GHI policies. Most of these companies are first-time insurance buyers with an average employee strength less than 100 and average age of employees being 30 years and parents being 57.5 years.
Moreover, the average sum insured for parental covers has increased from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh in the last two years, says the Plum report
While these numbers indicate a strong sense of responsibility among relatively early-age startups and enterprises in safeguarding the health and well-being of their employees and their families, this is only the beginning. Data shows that most parents insured are at retirement age, which makes them dependent on working members for their wellbeing.
For companies that do not insure their employees’ parents, there could be a loss of peace of mind and productivity. India also has the maximum out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure among G20 countries, which pushes nearly 60 million people into poverty every year (National Health Authority, 2020), which means one chronic disease can drain a family’s lifetime savings.
Says Abhishek Poddar, co-founder and CEO, Plum, in a press statement: “Our parents have played an instrumental role in shaping our future and, therefore, it is our moral responsibility to provide them with medical security at a time they need it most. In a country where one out of five people have diabetes and a majority of elders have pre-existing conditions, group health insurance is the best option to extend comprehensive healthcare to the elderly. Availability of products is no longer a challenge, but lack of awareness is.”
Including parental covers in group health insurance comes with several advantages such as no age bar for parents, no pre-medical check-ups required, coverage is applicable from day one and it covers pre-existing diseases among others. Moreover, organizations can customise their policies as per their requirements.
About 75 million people above the age of 60 in India suffer from some chronic disease, as per the world’s largest study on the aged, the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI). Health insurance penetration within this age group is among the lowest, owing to lack of awareness, accessibility and affordability. Further, individual retail policies have their own restrictions for on-boarding senior citizens. Therefore, in order to facilitate medical security for parents it is extremely important to include them under group health covers.
