Posted by meramd Sat, 16 Jun 2007 07:45:00 GMT
As a start towards resolving the insurance confusions, MeraMD is starting an insurance center. This will answer all your queries on life and health insurance in India. The center is active at http://www.meramd.com/insurance.html. Expect to see more of useful information to be added regularly over here.
The Outlook Money magazine has a good article on insurance in their recent (May 2007) edition. You can see this article here.
Posted by meramd Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:45:00 GMT
This is from the Times of India, Delhi Edition, June 12, 2007:
Employees confused over Mediclaim
Madhu T & Arti Sharma | TNN
Mumbai: Agents and development officers of New India Assurance are exasperated over the confusion prevailing among divisional offices regarding Mediclaim policies. They complain that although the regional offices issue a set of guidelines, each divisional office head is giving his own interpretation to those norms.
It was further reported that unmarried people have been denied insurance cover. It seems that there is widespread confusion regarding insurance. We do hope that the regulatory body IRDA wakes up and fixes this. Quoting further from the article:
‘‘There is no uniformity in approach. One divisional office issues Mediclaim policy to unmarried individual, while the other refuses cover to single individual,’’ says an insurance agent. ‘‘This is frustrating because you have to tell your customer to approach another agent if he wants the cover,’’ he adds. Officers have pointed out that these confusions are mainly with New India Assurance, as other three public sector general insurers have already come out with a new version of Mediclaim policy. TOI had reported in January about similar confusion arising at the time of calculating loading for renewals of Mediclaim policies for senior citizens. While some offices have been offering lower loading, others were charging the same person more for the same cover.
Posted by meramd Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:35:00 GMT
Following up on the previous blog, the MeraMD team did a health survey to figure out what YOU feel your health needs are. It looks like most people have the same pain points with the health care system. Most people that we talked to are really looking forward to some online resource to help them do simple things - locating a doctor, for instance. Many people have expressed interest in purchasing insurance online but they are troubled by incomplete information and apples to oranges comparisons on the websites today.
What can MeraMD do to help here? We brainstormed this and concluded that we need to provide the correct and complete insurance related infomation to users. This led to our site providing a home page for Insurance in India.
We have also got on board insurance agents who can answer your queries on health/life insurance. Please drop a mail to our panel at insurance@meramd.com to have your queries answered.
Posted by meramd Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:52:00 GMT
Health care in India is pathetic, we all know that (if anyone has any doubts do let us know, we can add numbers here). So we wanted to go ahead and be a change agent and try and build a consumer (patient) centric eco system so as to provide correct information to the consumer when and where he needs it. Let me discuss about some of the practical situations when this information would be handy to you (the consumer) :- 1. Someone in your family is diagnosed with a rare disease and you want to talk to other patients who are fighting with the same disease. Till now you rely on your doctor to provide this information (about other patients). However if there is a online source where you could just get in touch with other's with the same disease, won't that help? 2. You are on vacation to a city and for some reason (like a fever, stomach ache) you want to see a doctor. You have no way of getting reliable information about the local doctors and have to rely completely on an information that is provided by the hotel staff. Won't it help to get a list of doctors in that city along with the rating that helps you in identifying the right doctor for your needs. 3. When you need an information you generally search on the net and get results from various websites. In case of health your would want to see the results that are authentic and reliable. Won't it help to have a search that gives results from the authentic sites with authentic content. 4. Lot of times in the past you have relied on the dadima's advice about how to treat a specific problem. You must have drank that "haldi walla doodh" and "adrak-shehad" many times. However these cures are not documented anywhere and will it not help to have a community where in people can share their dadima's health advice with each other. 5. When you go for a pathology tests, generally you have to re-visit the lab to collect the report and this requires lot of time and effort (think of all those traffic jams and queues at the collection center), won't it help if you could access the reports on the web from the comfort of your home/office. 6. Generally pathology labs charge the price of the test at their will, because it is assumed that once the customer reaches their place he will get the test done. Won't it help to be able to compare the costs of a particular tests at various laboratories. Also if you could get an information about the experience other users have faced with the service provider. 7. Have you ever been in a situation when you have forgotten the vaccination due date for your kid? Friendly reminder a week before the due date would help, right? In order to deal with the scenarios listed above (and many others) we feel that everyone of us needs to have an access to a health portal that provides patient centric approach to health services. In the coming days and weeks we will be trying to fill in this gap.
Posted by meramd Sat, 02 Jun 2007 04:21:00 GMT
