• No cashless facility

As of now these policies do not provide a cashless facility. Which means, you will first have to pay the expenses out of your pocket and then claim for a reimbursement. In most mediclaim policies, a cashless facility is available wherein the insurance company will settle your bills directly with the hospital.

• Limited cover

In unit linked health insurance covers, there is a finite list of surgeries that are covered. This does not include surgeries like fractures from accidents. LIC officials confirm that you can claim only the hospital cash benefit in these cases. Your mediclaim policy will, however, cover accidents.

• Hospital cash benefit only for stay, over two days

You can claim for hospital cash benefits only if you are hospitalised for more than two days. This means that if your hospitalisation charges per day is Rs 1,000 and you stay admitted for four days, the insurer will pay you only for the last two days. The cost of the first two days will be borne by you. 

• High charges on investment portion

Because the investment portion is a unit linked plan, this policy suffers from what most unit linked plans suffer -- high upfront charges. For instance, LIC's Health Plus, charges 30 per cent of the premium in the first year and 6 per cent thereafter as policy allocation charge. For Reliance Health + Wealth, it is 25 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. Other charges include policy administration charges, fund management charges.