Benefits of having a group health insurance from your employer

Group health insurance is a type of health insurance policy which provides health insurance coverage for a group of members under a single policy in return for an amount known as premium. Group health insurance is usually taken by the employer for their employees and should have an employee-employer relationship to avail the policy. Group health insurance policy covers in-patient hospitalization, day care hospitalization, domiciliary hospitalization, room rent, nursing charges and ICU expenses. It also covers the organ donor expenses, emergency ambulance charges, cataract surgery and other surgeries.

Here are the benefits of having a group health insurance policy from your employer: –

No need to pay premium: The best thing about having a group health insurance from your employer is that there would be no need to pay the premium for the health insurance coverage as the premium would be paid by your employer in most of the cases. The premium saved here can be utilized to invest elsewhere to obtain greater returns. In most of the cases the health insurance premium under the group health insurance would be paid by the employer and the coverage would be enjoyed by the employees of the organization.
Parents can be covered: The major benefit of having a group health insurance policy is that parents can be included under the policy on payment of additional premium. It is important to note that for the parents to be covered under the group health insurance policy, the policy should be of 1+5 in nature which means that it covers Self, Spouse, up to 3 children and 2 parents/ parents-in-law. Most of the organizations do not cover the parents of employees but provide an option to include parents on payment of additional premium to the insurance company. The premium for parents would be decided by the insurance company based on many factors but the advantage for parents is that they need not wait to make a claim under the policy.
Coverage from day 1: The other benefit of having group health insurance from your employer is that you can avail coverage from day 1 without a need to wait for a certain period of time. Group health insurance can be customized to provide health insurance coverage from day 1 instead of waiting till the waiting period to make a claim. There would be exemption from the waiting periods under the group health insurance policy which is not available in a retail health insurance policy.
Income tax exemption: The other advantage of a group health insurance policy is that the income tax exemption can be availed if you had contributed fully or partially on the premium payment. The premium paid by you would be eligible for income tax exemption under the group health insurance policy. The exemption would be available under the Section 80D of the income tax act. The exemption is only applicable for the premium paid by the member as the premium paid by the employer cannot be claimed for exemption by the member.