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What treatments to disclose while filling proposal form as part of porting/migration process?
Share I am a 27-year-old with a health insurance policy that I have continued without break since 2001. I am thinking of migrating to a higher policy or porting to a new health insurer next year. I am confused about some of the questions being asked in the proposal form and also worried about losing my 8 year moratorium period.
How does one answer vague proposal form questions like "For past 4 years has the person to be insured consulted any physician for treatment or medical investigation or surgical operation?" There are equally vague questions on "mental illness". I have undergone outpatient treatment for food poisoning and many other minor ailments on an outpatient basis, but I do not have a record of that. I am assuming they are only referring to "intensive outpatient care treatments (IOCTs)". The only IOCT that I have availed is one related to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in 2013 for which I did psychotherapy/counseling, Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and Cognitive-biobehavioral Self-Treatment (web link). I recovered almost completely. I have never undergone any hospitalizations.
I recently underwent my first preventive health checkup, which I am going to submit with my current insurer so that they have "proof of good physical health". I will do this every year or two from now on.
I am trying everything possible to ensure that even if my health insurance claim were to get denied in the future, I can still win the lawsuit based on my proposal forms history and preventive health checkup history. These are the only types of documents that will save me in court I believe.
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Hello Shivansh,
You won't lose your moratorium period if you continue with the same insurer. Yes, there isn't enough clarity about the moratorium period when you port, and hence there is a risk right now.
Answering proposal form questions:
For the past 4 years has the person to be insured consulted any physician for treatment or medical investigation or surgical operation?
Agree this is a very vague question. We would recommend avoiding insurers who ask such open-ended questions (Not all of them ask such questions)
If you prefer to go with this insurer - then you should try and include every information you can remember and provide. Medical papers won't be asked for such small treatments - but we would recommend you go all out to make disclosures.
With Mental Illness too, we would recommend the same approach.
The ground rule is to a) Find an insurer that has a more user-friendly form b) Be as explicit as possible in your disclosures c) Maintain records of all disclosures made, and keep family informed about them.
About Medical Checkup submission:
We don't suggest this practice, and think you are overdoing this, as this is not a requirement from any insurer. We would however recommend that you do one comprehensive check and disclose any out of range values that were observed. In the coming years, you just ensure you are maintaining a record of these reports with your family members. That's it. You don't need to submit them.
Health Insurance claims can be denied only - if there is a missing disclosure, that you were aware of. As far as you have all records, you/your family shouldn't have an issue with this problem.
We would also recommend having a professional insurance advisor on your side - someone who helps navigate through insurance companies for you/your family when things go wrong.
Hope this was helpful
Cheers!
Team Beshak