The Health insurance is not only restricted to general insurance players in the industry; the Life Insurers have also started launching plans related to Health Insurance. The latter have come up with stand alone health insurance policies & also with combined plans of Health Insurance & investments.

The basic question which arises now is that how do these two set of Health schemes differ.

Coverage amount:
The Non-Life Insurance Health schemes will compensate you for the actual amount incurred during hospitalization while the Life insurance Health schemes give you the lump sum amount specified in the policy irrespective of your actual spend

Term:
General/Non-life Health schemes normally offer a term of only 1 year whereas the Life Health schemes are a long term policy. The former have to be renewed every year while the latter is a long term offering daily cash expenses which are pre-fixed.

Hospitalization coverage:
The Non-Life schemes cover mostly all forms of hospitalization, on the other hand the Life schemes are meant for a specified list of diseases.

Other options:
The Life Health schemes have come up with Investment options which are called Unit Linked Health Insurance Plans eg. Health + Wealth Plan by Reliance, Health Plus Plan by LIC, Medicash by Max New York Life are all bundled with the options of Health Insurance with ULIPs. The Non-Life Health schemes don’t offer an investment option with the Health Insurance plans.

These two categories of Health Plans are not substitutes for each other because these two set of plans fulfill different requirements/needs of the customers; the General health insurance plan offers coverage for 1 year & gives protection against all types of hospitalization expenses & needs to be renewed every year whereas the other plan offers a long term plan covering certain specified diseases but there is no need to renew it every year.