As per a recent survey, nearly 43 percent of health insurance policyholders have been struggling to process their claims over the past three years. Surveyed among over 39,000 respondents in 302 districts throughout the country, the survey underlined various difficulties and problems, including claim rejections, partial approvals, and slow processing times.
This was overwhelmingly emphasized by 93 percent of the respondents from the study conducted by Localcircles. They pressed the onus on the need for the implementation of regulatory reforms. They suggested that Insurance companies should also be mandated to provide information about claims and policy cancellations on their websites every month.
Despite the efforts of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), local consumers are still reportedly unable to deal with insurance companies over their health claims, according to Localcircles.
The statement from Localcircles said that the biggest complaints by consumers were about health insurance claims being rejected and policies being canceled by insurance providers. It also said that claims used to be partially granted only.
In some cases, the survey found, policyholders were kept waiting in the hospital for 10 to 12 hours after the patient was ready to be discharged because the claim processing was taking too long.
About the sale and renewal of general insurance, it found that 39 percent of people prefer to deal with agents, 40 percent utilize online aggregators, and 14 percent prefer the websites of the insurance companies or their apps.
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