Health insurance for parents: waiting periods, co-pay and tax

Hospital bills climb with age, so cover for your parents often matters more than your own. The good news: IRDAI, the insurance regulator, rewrote its health rules in 2024, and several changes help older buyers directly.

What changed in 2024

From 1 April 2024, the Insurance Products Regulations replaced the old 2016 health rules. The parts that matter for parents:

• Age. The old rules asked insurers to allow entry up to at least age 65. The new ones ask them to offer products for all age groups, and to design products for senior citizens. Insurers still assess each proposal, so a medical test or a higher premium is possible.
• Pre-existing disease wait. A condition diagnosed or treated in the 36 months before cover starts can be made to wait at most 36 months of continuous cover.
• Specific disease wait. Listed treatments, such as cataract or hernia, can have their own waiting period, also capped at 36 months.
• The 60-month rule. After 60 months of continuous cover, no claim can be contested for non-disclosure, except for proven fraud. IRDAI calls this the moratorium period.
• A senior citizens’ channel. Every insurer must run a separate channel for senior citizens’ health claims and grievances, listed on its website.

Read these terms before you buy

Policies for older buyers often carry cost-sharing terms. IRDAI’s buyer guidance asks you to check three in particular.

• Co-pay. A set share of every admissible claim that you pay. With a 20% co-pay on a 3 lakh rupee claim, you pay 60,000 rupees and the insurer pays 2.4 lakh (an illustration).
• Room rent limit. A cap on the daily room charge. Take an 8,000 rupee room on a 5,000 rupee limit for four days, and 12,000 rupees of room rent is yours (an illustration). Some policies also cut linked charges in proportion, so read the wording.
• Sub-limits. Caps on particular treatments, whatever your sum insured.

Separate cover or add them to your floater?

You can add parents to a family floater, but there are trade-offs. IRDAI lists age as a key pricing factor, so older members can push up the cost of the whole policy. One large claim for a parent can also use up cover your children share. Our guide to family floater vs individual cover works through a rupee example.

The tax benefit

On the old tax regime, premiums for your parents can be deducted up to 25,000 rupees a year, or 50,000 rupees if either parent is 60 or older. This bucket sits apart from the one for yourself, your spouse and children. The deduction, long known as section 80D, is now section 126 of the Income-tax Act, 2025. The new regime, in section 202, does not allow it.

An illustration. Say you pay 45,000 rupees a year for your senior parents’ policy. All of it is within the 50,000 rupee limit. At the 30% old-regime slab, that saves 13,500 rupees before cess. More detail is in the health insurance tax benefit.

Did you know? If your parents already have a policy, you don’t need to restart their waiting periods to get better terms. Porting to another insurer carries over the time already served, to the extent of the existing sum insured.

The takeaway. Buy early, disclose every condition, and keep the cover unbroken so the 36-month and 60-month clocks keep running. Read the co-pay and room rent terms before price. And if a claim is ever cut, know what to do when a health claim is rejected.

More to read: the health insurance guide, how much health cover you need, and super top-up health insurance.