Group Health Insurance: Strong employee retention tool

Health is Wealth is a very famous saying, and everyone tries different methods to maintain their wellbeing. However, life never follows a fixed pattern and thus, bodily injury or sudden illness can occur to anybody and may leave one both financially and physically stressed. Therefore, it is always good to have a medical insurance policy for such situations.

There are various different types of health insurance policies available in the market and group health insurance is one. A group health insurance plan is used to provide risk coverage to the people who belong to a specific group. Generally, this policy is given by employers to employees. Group health insurance policies come in different variations and every organization can customize a plan according to the requirements of its employees. There are some group health insurance plans that cover the families of the insured people as well. So, it entirely depends upon the organization what kind of group health insurance plan it selects.

When the group health insurance is provided by the employer, then both employee and employer are supposed to be the beneficiary. This is because; the plan addresses both the parties of a group.

Advantages of Group Health Insurance Policies

Employees are the treasured part of any organization. These days more and more companies are becoming employee-centric and corporate health insurance has emerged as one of the most preferred benefits to lure new talent. It plays a crucial role in influencing the psychology of an employee. It makes him feel part of a company and thus, it curtails employee attrition rate and unrest in labor unions. Moreover, it increases their productivity which increases profitability of a business.

Special insurance schemes where families are also covered for benefits make employees faithful towards their employers. Moreover, by offering coverage to your employees, you become eligible to get tax deductions under Income Tax Act.

So, group health insurance policy is a win-win situation for both employees and employers. The group health insurance policy for employees is advantageous for both employer and employee.

Advantages for Employers

• Helps in Employee Retention: In this modern era when there are a lot of jobs in all the fields, employee retention has become a difficult task. However, if the employer provides benefits like health insurance coverage to all its employees and his/her families as well, then the chances of an employee staying in the company increase.
• Tax Benefits: As mentioned above both employer and employees are the beneficiaries in a health insurance plan for the group, thus the employer also gets tax benefits for providing such policies to its employees.
• Motivated Employees: Today, when the medical costs are at its peak, having a health insurance plan, motivates employees.
• Better Benefits in Low Cost: Health insurance for employees provide better benefits in comparatively lesser cost than individual health insurance policy.

Advantages for Employees

• Pre-existing Disease is Covered from Day 1: Unlike any individual health plan, a group health insurance policy starts covering pre-existing diseases from the day an employee joins the organization. In this way, there is no waiting period for any pre-existing disease.
• An Extensive Range of Coverage with No limit on Diseases: Apart from covering pre-existing diseases, a group health insurance plan for employees provides a wider coverage with no limit on diseases.
• Larger Maternity Coverage: A wider maternity cover is one of the best advantages given to young employees. Most of these plans provide coverage for both C-section and normal deliveries. Some plans as well cover the new-born babies without a standard 90 days of maternity cover.

Group Mediclaim in Short

The essential part of an organization is human beings. As a part of HR Policy, many organizations take a Group Health Insurance cover to seek protection to their employees.

The policy is meant to cover Hospitalization Expenses incurred by the members of an organization in case they happen to suffer from a disease or sustain an accidental injury, the following Hospitalization expenses will be paid under following heads:

• Room, Boarding and Nursing Expense.
• Medical Practitioner/ Anaesthetist, Consultant fees, fees of surgeon.
• Expenses on Anaesthesia, Blood, Oxygen, Operation Theatre, Surgical Appliances, Medicines and Drugs, Diagnostic Materials and X-ray, Dialysis, Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy, Cost of Pacemaker, Artificial Limbs, Cost of Organ and similar expenses.
• Expenses on Vitamins and Tonics only if forming part of treatment as certified by the attending Medical Practitioner.
• The relevant expenses incurred for Domiciliary Hospitalisation.
• An additional Daily Allowance for the duration of Hospitalisation towards defraying of miscellaneous expenses.
• Ambulance charges in connection with any admissible claim limited.
• Admissible day care treatment (less than 24 hrs hospitalization), pre and post hospitalization.
• Cost of Health Check-up – Reimbursement of cost of medical check-up once at the end of a block of every four continuous claim free policy years, subject to maximum of 1% of the average sum insured during the period.
• Other admissible expenses.

This policy will trigger when there is minimum 24 hours hospitalisation. The hospital where treatment is taken should have minimum 15 beds. The policy holder can avail cashless facility for the treatment taken or he may go for reimbursement of expenses incurred.

The basic cover can be enhanced by opting for Add-on covers by paying an extra premium and such Add-on covers are as below:

• Waiver for Pre-existing diseases.
• Waiver for first 30 days exclusion.
• Waiver for first year/ first two years/ first four years exclusion.
• Maternity Benefits and Newborn Baby cover from day one.
• Corporate Buffer.

This policy is a very good tool for an organization to ensure that their employees are fully covered to meet any sort of medical emergency. A group insurance policy gives you advantages of standardised coverage and very competitive premium rates. You can avail of group insurance policies that a group you belong to takes.

A group health insurance plan provides cover to all the members in a single policy. There are several advantages over Buying an individual policy, which are:

• Lower Premium Costs
• Customized Policy
• Cover for all members
• Cashless Claims across Network Hospitals
• Provides Incentive for having affiliation with the group
• Cover From day One of member joining the group.

It is no secret that members do value health insurance benefits. Whether you are an organization or a small group, you could attract and retain the best talent in the industry by providing comprehensive health insurance benefits. Your policy can be tailor made to suit the requirement of your group.

Properly administered, the Group Mediclaim cover can be hugely beneficial to employers as well as employees. Compared to individual policies, group covers are more lenient in terms of coverage. For example, there are group covers that have features such as maternity health benefits and family floater plans, which are usually excluded under individual policies. Besides, insurers are willing to waive the 30-Day cooling period which is usually there under individual policies.

A number of expenses are not covered under the cover provided by the employer. Suppose you are ill and you are off work for two to three months. You may also go on leave without pay. However, some of these products give you supplementary income replacement.

Employees are the most important assets for an organisation. As an employer, your priority would be to ensure their well-being for financial and practical reasons. Group Health Insurance covers the employees against expenses due to illnesses or accidental injury. The employees may belong to organizations with number of employees more than 20 like banking institutions, multi-nationals or SMEs including both financial and non-financial institutions.

The size of the group can be either small or large as per the requirement. The members can also be covered under different sub-groups with varying sum insured. The conditions for such classification of employees into sub-groups will be decided by the employer or group administrator based on their position or risk category.

BENEFITS FOR THE EMPLOYEES

While the specifics of the group health insurance policy may vary from company to company, the general coverage comprises of:

• HOSPITALISATION COSTS: Costs including room rent, boarding, nursing, doctor’s fees, anaesthetist’s fees, diagnostic tests medicines & drugs etc.
• PRE-HOSPITALISATION COSTS: Expenses prior to hospitalisation, up to certain number of days, as mentioned in the policy schedule.
• POST-HOSPITALISATION COSTS: Up to pre-determined number of days, as fixed in the policy schedule, after discharge.
• CASHLESS HOSPITALISATION: Cashless services through a Third-Party Administrator based on the tie-ups with network hospitals.
• PROTECTION AT A LOW COST: The cost of buying an insurance policy is shared within the group or entirely by the employer.
• 24X7 COVERAGE: Protection against unforeseen events at all times anywhere in India.
• BENEFITS FOR THE EMPLOYER: Along with giving the benefit to the employees and their beneficiaries, Group Mediclaim is also beneficial to the employer.
• Strong employee retention tool
• Builds loyalty among the employees for the organisation and can prove a morale booster.
• Removing and adding employees from a group is easy.

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