Employers in both the private and public sector organizations in India seek to attract the best human resources in the industry and offer various attractive group health insurance covers to their employees with facilities like lumpsum payments, reimbursement of hospitalization expenses, fixed medical allowance etc. Group health insurance policies have a lot of advantages over individual mediclaim policies like lower costs, most of them have no waiting period for claims, even employees in a high risk category health wise with a not so good health profile are covered.

Inspite of all these advantages, it is advisable not to depend only on your employer provided health cover and opt for an individual mediclaim policy for your family. Consider this –

1. The employer health cover lasts only as long as you are employed with the company. It ceases when you quit or switch jobs and there is no guarantee that your new organization would have this facility.
2. If the organization becomes a loss making one or there is a change in their policies, they might want to cut costs and may do away with this benefit and you will be left without a health cover.
3. Not all group mediclaims cover all the family members-dependent parents, spouse and kids. Some companies cover only the employee concerned, some cover the spouse and kids too but not the parents, in which case a separate cover anyway has to be taken for them.
4. Banking only on the employers’ health policy would leave you without a health insurance when you retire-which is when you are likely to need it the most and may not be in a position to take a new one. Very few organizations, mainly the PSUs provide health benefits after retirement too.
5. A group policy usually doesn’t allow for much customization, but a personal health care policy is more flexible and can be customized to suit the client’s requirements with attractive features like income replacement benefits, accident and death benefit.

Given the alarming rate at which health care expenses and the percentage of people contracting serious health problems is growing, it would be prudent not to compromise on preventive health care expenses and have a comprehensive coverage over and above that provided by your employer.