Cloudnine, AffordPlan partner to deliver affordable maternity, healthcare facilities

AffordPlan, a financial savings platform for healthcare announced its partnership with Cloudnine Group of Hospitals to enable customised savings solutions for the latter's patients opting for elective procedures under maternity, childcare and fertility treatments.

AffordPlan is currently catering to seven Cloudnine centres and will be soon present in all 19 locations across Gurugram, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Chandigarh.

The company will also commence operations in Bengaluru through its partnership with the Cloudnine chain, after solidifying its presence in the Delhi - NCR region, and company plans to cover over 100 hospitals in the next six months in the IT hub alone.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) had indicated that less than 20 percent of Indians have health insurance cover. Much lower than that is the penetration of insurance products in the maternity and fertility treatments.

Currently, in India, there are no health insurance plans that solely cater to maternity or fertility, instead pregnancy-related expenses are covered as an additional benefit. The overall cost of pregnancy is double the cost of delivery of the child. Plans that cover maternity expenses usually have very long waiting periods (up to 4 years) and high premiums. Surveys suggest that infertility, in both men and women, has seen a 20-30 percent rise in the last five years in India.

In such a scenario, insurance companies tend to be apprehensive of high chances of claim payouts, if infertility treatments are included in the insurance policies. Complications related to maternity such as miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy are not covered under the health insurance policies.

AffordPlan, therefore, acts as an alternative for patients to save with their choice of hospitals and avail benefits during Antenatal care period. Couples can plan ahead by creating customised bite-sized instalments to pay for their future healthcare expenditures.