Recharge Benefits in Health Insurance
Updated On Jan 22, 2021
As consumers, we tend to derive more services or benefits from the products that we buy. Focusing upon the benefits provided by health insurance, a major one to put here is the Recharge Benefit. It is one such product that offers you an additional sum insured, at no extra cost. Let us understand the concept in detail.
What is a recharge benefit and how does it work?
For instance, you have a sum insured of 5 Lakh which got completely exhausted during a recent hospitalization. Unlike in standard health insurance policy, the recharge benefit here will allow your entire sum insured (5 Lakh) to get automatically reinstated for the future purpose of making claims, in the same policy year.
Whereas, in standard health insurance, you will have to wait until the next policy year to use the cover if you had exhausted it recently. In short, a recharge benefit not only saves a policyholder’s money but also his/her time as it eliminates the worries related to delay your treatment until the next policy year.
Things to note
If you are wondering how can the health insurance companies afford to offer dual cover at such a low price, then you must know that the recharge benefit comes along with a few conditions. The policyholders must fulfill the following conditions (which are generally standard in all the policies), to be able to use the recharged amount in their policies.
1. Sum insured should be completely exhausted
The recharge option clicks in only after the policyholder has entirely exhausted the basic sum insured.
2.Same or related illness
The recharge amount cannot be used for the same or related illness for which treatment has already been taken place in the same policy year. However, in certain health insurance plans, recharge benefit is offered for the same or related illness.
What needs to be done?
According to the conditions stated above, you must be certain that you have a good level of cover even under the restore option. Taking note of the conditions mentioned above, we can figure out that a recharge plan works best with a family floater health insurance plan where the cost of treatment of one member can easily exhaust the entire sum insured. The recharge benefit restores the sum insured and it can be used by other family members thereby reducing the financial burden of the family. Other concepts used by various insurers slightly different from recharge benefit are-restore, reinstatement, regain, refill etc.
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