Should one go for an individual mediclaim policy for all family members or it is better to go for a ‘family floater’ cover?
Deepak Rastogi, Faridabad
The ‘family floater’ clause in a health insurance policy provides each family member the benefit of the entire sum insured under the policy. In the individual mediclaim policy, you specify the sum insured against each family member and in the event of a claim under the policy, if the expenses go beyond that amount, one has to bear those expenses oneself. Under the ‘family floater’ scheme, you choose a sum insured which floats over all the members of the family. This effectively means that if one of the members of the family is hospitalized, the entire sum insured will be available for him/her. For example, if you insure four members of your family for Rs 1 lakh each under a normal mediclaim policy and if the cost of treatment of any member comes to Rs 2.50 lakh, the policy will pay only upto Rupees one lakh and rest will have to be borne by you. As opposed to this if the policy was issued with the family floater clause with sum insured for Rs 4 lakh, the claim of Rs 2.5 lakh will become payable. It is therefore; better to go for a family floater cover.
