In modern day India, rapid economic growth and increasing urbanisation have led to significant changes in demographic and socio-economic lifestyle of Indian families.

Our eating habits and sedentary working conditions have led to the increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases like cancer, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease to name a few.
But what is more alarming is that contrary to popular belief, all sections of the population, and not merely the rich, are affected. According to World Health Organisation projections, by 2020, seven million Indians will die of lifestyle diseases.

The absence of appropriate health insurance cover to meet the unforeseen future will make the situation far more worse. Rajesh (not his real name), a 42-year-old trader, is one of those unfortunate millions who has to bear the agony of insufficient health cover. A couple of weeks ago, he was diagnosed with coronary heart disease and advised bypass surgery. Though his mediclaim policy covered the charges for the surgery, it did not cover other miscellaneous expenses such as transpo-rtation costs, food charges for the attendant, etc.

That the doctor had advised complete bed rest for four months complicated matters further as Mahesh was the sole earner in his family of five. He had other financial commitments in the form of EMIs for his home and car, along with his kids’ school fees and monthly house expenditure. Had he secured his future with an insurance cover that met all his requirements in ac-cordance with his lifest-yle, he would have been in a far better position today. Best described as a combination of health and personal accident insurance coverage, a lifestyle protection plan is the solution to the problems that people like Rajesh face because of insufficient health insu-rance coverage and the inability to meet monthly household expenses due to prolonged illness.

Such a plan not only takes care of hospitalisat-ion expenses but also gives lump sum compensation for critical illnesses and the provision to provide compensation for permanent disability to the insured. By making use of a simple lifestyle protection plan calculator, a custo-mer would be better-placed to choose his plan based on his monthly expenditure and lifestyle. For example, if a person’s monthly income is Rs 50,000 and his expenses are as listed below:

Loan EMI: Rs 22,000
Food provisions: Rs 7,000 Electricity/phone: Rs 2,500
School fees: Rs 2,000
Parents’ expenses: Rs 10,000
Savings: Rs 3,000

The recommended coverage for this individual would be:
(a) Rs 3 lakh of critical illn-ess coverage
(b) Rs 35 lakh for permanent disability
By choosing such a plan, a customer can leverage both his health and personal accident coverage.

This lifestyle protection plan takes care of incidental expenses, medical expenses, loan payments and liabilities. Ultimately, the customer is insured against critical illness, accidental death and permanent total disability, for which the customer ge-ts a lump sum compensation. Such a plan helps us cho-ose from different personal accident and health plans.

The advantage of having this plan is that it offers double compensation features in case of accidental death and permanent total disability while travelling in a public transport. Also it has extended compensation for permanent total disability up to 150 per cent of accidental death sum insured.

The writer is a senior vice-president, health, commercial lines and reinsurance at Bharti AXA General Insurance