Is Brain Tumor Covered by Health Insurance Plans in India?

Does Health Insurance Cover Brain Tumour?

Brain Tumor is a critical disease that can cause a huge impact on an individual’s health and finances. Read on to know if brain tumor is covered by health insurance plans in India or not.

We all know the importance of our brain as an organ that helps us keep moving. Brain provides us the much required things to live like memory, senses, intelligence and so on. So, when there is even a minute issue with the functioning of the brain, it becomes a cause of concern. And if you are faced with a critical disease like brain tumor, the worries become manifold. This is because being a critical illness, it causes a lot of expense in the treatment of brain tumors. So, it is important to know if the brain tumor is covered under the best health insurance in India or not. In this blog, we will discuss the same.

What do You Mean by Brain tumor?

Brain tumor is a disease that is caused by the abnormal growth of cells in an individual’s brain. These cells grow uncontrollably in the brain and even compress the structure and tissues of the brain. Thus, brain tumor is considered as a life threatening disease.

There might be two kinds of tumor in brain, namely benign, which are non-cancerous and malignant, which are cancerous. The non-cancerous benign cells don’t spread to the other areas, whereas the malignant cancerous cells can spread to other areas of the human body.

Brain tumor is a critical illness and it can be cured with advanced treatment if diagnosed at an early stage via surgery. Thus, it is important to note brain tumor symptoms if any and get a medical check-up done to be able diagnose it in the early stage.

However, being a costly surgery  that requires a sum of over two to seven lakh at least, it becomes difficult for common people to carry on such treatment. Further, the charges might differ as per the place and the hospital where you get the brain tumor treatment in India done. So, if you get the treatment done in a big city and a good private hospital offering most advanced gadgets, you will have to pay more as compared to in small cities and government hospitals.

Thus, having a health insurance policy is important to deal with such critical illnesses. So, now let us see if health plans offer coverage against brain tumor.

Do Health Insurance Policies Cover Brain tumor in India?

Yes, the good news is that there are health plans offered by the best health insurance companies in India that cover against brain tumors. So, an insured can get compensation for the expenses incurred in a surgery that is done to remove the tumor.  The coverage is allowed for the below costs related to brain tumor treatment through surgery:

• hospitalization
• ICU charges
• ambulance charges
• pre-hospitalization
• post-hospitalization, and
• other medical expenses

However, depending on the health plan,  the coverage allowed may vary.

If the tumor is benign, most health plans might cover it as part of a critical illness policy and might compensate the insured with a lump sum amount to incur the cost of surgery, medicines and so on. However, it is not necessary that all critical illness health policies will allow coverage for benign tumors and thus reading policy documents properly is important.

Is There Any Waiting Period for Brain Tumor Treatment in India under Health Insurance Policies?

Yes, waiting periods are generally levied on most health insurance policies before the insured could claim coverage against a particular disease, including brain tumor.  So, if the insured raises a claim for brain tumor before the completion of the waiting period, it will get rejected by the insurer.

Most health plans do have a 30 day initial waiting period. Besides that, a 90 days waiting period might be there before under critical illness insurance before the insured could raise a claim against the costs incurred on a brain tumor surgery.

Further, there might also be a 30 days survival period levied under critical illness insurance. Under such a period, if the insured dies the insurer will not pay any compensation.

Since there are many terms and conditions involved in terms of waiting period, survival period and so on, it is important to check them all before buying a health policy.