If you are an entrepreneur, it’s a no-brainer that your workers are the asset of your organization and a key element to your company's success. Hence, it becomes imperative for you to offer them far-reaching employee benefits including group health insurance plans. However, picking the right health care coverage plans can get complicated if your questions go unanswered. You might have plenty of inquiries regarding group health insurance plans, how they work, what is the minimum number of employees required, how they are better from individual health care coverage and a lot more. We have got you covered!
Read - A complete guide to Group Health Insurance
What is Group Health Insurance?
Group Health Insurance is the health insurance given by employers to all employees in the form of employee benefits. All employees get the same insurance and the employer decides what coverage they want to offer. In India, the general cover is between 3 lakh to 5 lakhs. Employees can claim this insurance for certain hospitalisation expenses.
Read - What is claim settlement ratio?
Minimum number of employees for Group Health Insurance in India
As per Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), a company with 7 or more lives is qualified to get group health insurance. However, it is up to the insurers to decide the minimum size they want to cater to. Public insurers offer group health insurance to companies with more than 100 lives and private insurers offer it to companies with more than 50 lives.
What’s the exception?
- As mentioned, insurers take into account the number of lives and not the number of employees. So companies can add in family members of the employees. Assume you got yourself an insurer who is giving you group health insurance for a minimum size of 7 lives. You have only 5 employees in your company. So you can also count the parents of the employees to increase the number of lives. Generally, companies with less than 200 employees ask for 100% enrollment of parents.
- Part-time workers are not eligible for group health insurance. However, if your company has less than 7 employees but has a workforce majorly working part-time, then you can get group health insurance.
- As per regulation, people above 65 years of age are not eligible for group health insurance. But if your workforce is primarily made of old people, there are provisions to get group health insurance.
What happens if the employee size goes lesser than the minimum size after group health insurance is issued?
The limit applies only at the time of issuance of a group health insurance policy. If the number decreases after you get your group health insurance it won’t be a problem. However, when you go renewal, which happens annually, you need to have the minimum size that your insurer dictates.
Group Health Insurance by Pazcare
We offer group health insurance to companies with just 2 employees. But that’s not even the best part. We offer the best prices in the market and also a plethora of additional benefits like mental wellness, unlimited doctor consultations, super top-up, health checkups, laboratory allowance and more. You also get a sophisticated employer dashboard to easily manage and track the group health insurance policies of your employees.
Get in touch with our insurance experts to know more!