What is a Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan?

Written by : Knowledge Centre Team

2025-11-14

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You may have heard the saying, ‘Health is wealth’. This saying cannot be more true, especially in this time of COVID-19. We can work hard and achieve all our goals only when we have good health on our side.

Medical expenses are rising constantly. Healthcare is becoming one of the most costly sectors of India. The fast-paced lifestyle leaves us little time to take care of ourselves. This along with rising costs has stressed more the fact that we should take proper care of our health.

We need to keep our health in check by maintaining a healthy diet, resting, and reducing stress. We should also conduct tests regularly to know if there is something wrong.

But there are certain issues we have no control on. To make sure treatment of these does not take a toll on your finances, health insurance is necessary.

What is a Health Insurance Plan?

Health insurance is a type of insurance in which the insurer agrees to cover full or part of your health care expenses in exchange for regular payments, known as premiums. Health insurance should be a must for everyone, with health costs being ever-increasing.

Limitations of a Health Insurance Plan

Though health insurance tries to cover all the health expenses, it still fails to cover some major expenses that are costly too.

Health insurance covers only some specific diseases. Most health insurance does not offer outpatient (people who do not stay in the hospital overnight) costs.

To overcome these difficulties a better form of health insurance has been evolved, known as Comprehensive Health Insurance.

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Why Should you Opt for a Comprehensive Health Insurance?

Comprehensive health insurance provides you with better and more extensive service than regular health insurance.

Comprehensive health insurance covers all the major diseases and makes sure that you do not have to take the burden of arranging finances for your medical issues.

Here are some benefits that comprehensive health insurance provides.

Extensive Coverage: Comprehensive health insurance offers you wider coverage. This type of insurance not only covers your medical expenses when you are being treated in the hospital but also the costs that apply before and after treatment as well. It includes pre and post-hospitalization expenses.
Covers Outpatient Expenses: This is the major fact that differentiates this from regular health insurance plans. Comprehensive health insurance includes outpatient or OPD costs in their coverage.

What are Outpatient Expenses?

There are times when you do not need to get hospitalized. Just visiting a doctor is enough. You may also need to follow up and consult with your doctor or physician. All these expenses are classified as outpatient costs.
Can Cover the Whole Family In 1 Plan: A health insurance plan is mostly limited to one person. But with comprehensive policies, you can add other members of your family such as your wife and child. Some plans also let you add your extended family members such as in-laws.

The premiums are affordable in this plan rather than taking a separate policy for each. It helps each member get a greater cover.

For example, if you have taken a policy worth Rs 10 lakh, then all the covered members can make claims up to Rs 10 lakh.

Also, you can take the policy for yourself and add new members to the existing policy as and when the need arises, such as marriage, childbirth.
Cover for Pre-Existing Diseases: You can opt for a comprehensive health insurance plan even if you have pre-existing diseases.
The coverage for pre-existing diseases, however, starts after the waiting period. This is the duration you wait until your policy starts covering specific diseases.
Include Riders to Enhance Coverage: Riders are an essential part of every insurance, be it health insurance or life insurance. These are the additional benefits that can improve the scope of your existing policy.

These riders will provide you with coverage for those things which your policy does not cover.

Though most of the policy lets you select the riders, some policies have them pre-included. Some of the riders that are generally offered/included in the policy are:
- Maternity cover
- Personal accident cover
- Critical Illness cover
Cashless: Comprehensive plans give you the facility of the cashless procedure. Every medical cost that is incurred is covered directly by the insurance company.

Cashless payments ensure that your family does not have to worry about the claim forms, hospital bills, etc at the time when you are ill.
Life-Long Renewability: Comprehensive insurance plans come with life-long renewability. There is no specific term involved and you can keep your policy running for as long as you want.

This feature helps the senior citizens as the premiums rise with age and very few policies tend to cover you after attaining the age of 65.

This also reduces the financial burden, especially at the time when medical costs are sky-rocketing.
Includes Non-Hospital Treatment: Alternative systems of healthcare like Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Ayurveda etc. have been very popular in India.

These are commonly referred to as AYUSH treatments. Comprehensive Insurance plans cover such treatment costs as well.

Health Insurance Plans for Comprehensive Coverage

You need to ensure coverage for minor as well as major illnesses, as both have the potential to damage your financial life. Thus, you need comprehensive coverage with health insurance plans.

To create a comprehensive health cover, you need the following two types of health insurance plans:

Defined Benefit Plans: Critical health insurance to assist in diagnosis of a life-threatening disease, such as cancer
Defined Contribution Plans: Mediclaim Insurance to take care of hospitalisation and daycare expenses

Critical Health Insurance Plan

It offers you the following benefits:

Comprehensive coverage against heart and cancer-related diseases
Covers a range of 26 critical illnesses in the plan
It gives you a payout in a lump sum the moment you are diagnosed with a critical illness.
All the future premiums will be waived off and will be taken care of by the company after you are diagnosed with a minor illness.
Offers your return of premium option as well. Your premium will be returned after maturity.

Mediclaim Insurance

Mediclaim insurance plans help you reduce your treatment costs for hospitalisation and daycare treatments. The benefit amount in these policies depends purely on the money spent on the treatments.

A majority of Mediclaim policies will pay a major portion of your treatment expenses. Check the details and cover limits with the policy while buying.

Disclaimer - This article is issued in the general public interest and meant for general information purposes only. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Canara HSBC Life Insurance Company Limited or any affiliated entity. We make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or availability with respect to the blog or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in the blog for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk. You should consult with a qualified professional regarding your specific circumstances before taking any action based on the content provided herein.