‘Health insurance firms refusing cover to Covid-recovered patients’

At a time when the country is reeling under a health crisis triggered by the Covid-19 virus, many health insurance companies are denying people health insurance if they have been infected with Covid-19.

Major health insurance companies have quietly decided to refuse health insurance to individuals who have been affected with Covid-19, citing that the companies are at risk to enrol them for the first few months of their recovery since they have reports of many patients showing cases of symptom relapses and hospitalisation for Covid-19 recovered patients in the first three months.

Most of these health insurance companies have framed policies of a “cooling off” period of 45 to 180 days for Covid-19 recovered patients before they are issued any health insurance policies.

Many people reached out to The Sunday Guardian expressing their anguish over the “arbitrary” policy which deprives people of something which is “as basic as health insurance”.

Manisha Singh, a home maker in New Delhi, told The Sunday Guardian that she was looking to purchase health insurance for her two children who just recovered from Covid-19, but all the major companies turned her away saying that her children had to wait for at least 45 days.

“We have seen what happened during the second wave of Covid-19 in Delhi; people who did not have insurance were being ripped off by hospitals. Understanding the importance of health insurance, I decided to enrol both my children who just recovered from Covid-19, but all the insurance companies that we reached out to said that they couldn’t issue us any insurance for 60 days since my children were Covid-19 positive around 20 days ago. Is this not unfair and arbitrary? I urge the government to intervene in this matter,” Manisha said.

A businessman from Delhi, who had to be hospitalised for Covid-19 and has recovered, was allegedly told by the Max Bupa health insurance company that he had to wait for at least 120 days before he could be issued a health insurance by Max Bupa, while ICICI Lombard health insurance company told him that he had to wait for 90 days before he could be issued a policy since he