Help regarding in choosing the health insurance policy

Hello Jayashankar,

The key things to look for in health insurance have been answered here: Looking for Health insurance for my family | Beshak Forum and here: What are a few key things to take into account before buying health insurance? | Beshak Forum

1. In our view, Claim Settlement Ratio does not in any manner reflect the efficiency or quality of service or claim settlement you will experience. It gives the ratio of  the number of claims settled to all the claims made in that financial year - Not the ratio of ‘valid claims’ settled to the ‘valid claims’ made. The claim settlement ratio of 99% does not mean you have 99% chances of your claims getting paid by the specific insurer. Claim payment will be based on the scope of coverage, and whether you made the right declarations when buying the policy - if you have understood these too well, you need not watch any ratios.
2. Incurred Claim Ratio - helps understand the profitability of the insurer - can give an understanding of how prices will be under pressure for insurers with high Incurred Ratio. We wrote about this here: Deconstructing the increase in Health Insurance Premiums in 2020 (beshak.org)
3. Regarding Topup - we would recommend going for one plan with 10 Lakhs cover for your mother and buy a separate cover for you and your brother. A base plan should be minimum of 10 Lakhs to ensure you don't have to repeatedly use multiple policies and a topup is utilized less frequently. This avoids making multiple claims which believe us is a tedious affair.
4. Buying policies for multiple years can simply help you get premium discounts. If these are appealing you can very well go for them. Check if your requirements with respect to the 80D deduction are met - We have heard some insurers do provide split 80D receipts to claim for different years.