List of Health Policies in India: Types, Categories and How to Choose

India's health insurance market has expanded significantly over the past two decades — driven by rising healthcare costs, growing consumer awareness, regulatory expansion of the product framework and the government's push for universal health coverage. The market today offers a diverse range of health insurance products from over twenty IRDAI-licensed standalone health insurers and general insurance companies, spanning individual policies, family coverage, senior citizen products, specialised disease covers and government-sponsored schemes.

For insurance buyers trying to understand what is available and which category of health policy is most relevant to their specific situation, a structured overview of the complete landscape — from individual indemnity policies to government-backed mass coverage schemes — provides the orientation needed for informed decision-making. This guide presents a comprehensive list of health policy categories available in India, what each type covers and who it is most suited for.

Category One: Individual Health Insurance

Individual health insurance is the foundational category — a policy covering a single named insured person against hospitalisation costs and related medical expenses. Each insured person under an individual plan has their own dedicated sum insured — the maximum the insurer will pay for covered claims in a policy year — that applies exclusively to them and is not shared with any other insured person.

Individual health insurance is appropriate for single adults without dependants, for adults who want dedicated coverage amounts for each family member rather than a shared pool, and for members of a family who have significantly different health risks or ages that make individual pricing more appropriate than a combined floater.

Major insurers offering comprehensive individual health insurance include Star Health and Allied Insurance, Niva Bupa Health Insurance, Care Health Insurance, HDFC Ergo, ICICI Lombard, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, New India Assurance, National Insurance, Oriental Insurance and United India Insurance, among others. Private sector standalone health insurers — Star Health, Niva Bupa, Care Health and Aditya Birla Health Insurance — focus exclusively on health products and have built specialised claims infrastructure and hospital networks for this category.

Category Two: Family Floater Health Insurance

Family floater health insurance covers an entire family — typically the policyholder, spouse and dependent children — under a single shared sum insured. The family floater premium is calculated primarily based on the oldest insured family member's age, and the shared sum insured can be used by any family member for any covered event in the policy year.

Family floaters are more premium-efficient than individual policies for families where simultaneous large claims by multiple members are statistically unlikely. A family of four — parents and two young children — covered under a single twenty-lakh family floater typically pays less total premium than four individual ten-lakh policies would cost. The risk is that a large claim by one family member — particularly a hospitalisation consuming most of the floater sum insured — reduces the coverage available for others in the same year.

Most major health insurers in India offer family floater variants of their flagship individual health products, with the same coverage features applied to the floater structure.

Category Three: Senior Citizen Health Insurance

Senior citizen health insurance is specifically designed for individuals above sixty years — addressing the significant difficulty that older adults faced in purchasing standard individual health insurance, which historically had age-based upper limits for entry and renewal.

IRDAI's regulatory framework has progressively improved senior citizen health insurance access — removing standard age caps for renewal and requiring insurers to offer health insurance to older applicants. Senior citizen health products are available from Star Health, Niva Bupa and other specialist health insurers, designed for individuals who are taking out health insurance for the first time at an older age or who need a product specifically structured for the health risk profile of older adults.

Senior citizen policies typically have higher premiums than standard adult policies reflecting the elevated health risk, may include co-payment provisions that require the insured to bear a percentage of each claim and may have specific provisions for managing pre-existing conditions common at this life stage.

Category Four: Critical Illness Insurance

Critical illness insurance is a specialised health insurance category that pays a defined lump sum benefit upon the first diagnosis of a specified critical illness — rather than reimbursing actual hospitalisation costs. The covered critical illnesses typically include cancer, cardiac events including heart attack and open heart surgery, stroke, kidney failure requiring dialysis, major organ transplants, multiple sclerosis and a defined list of other serious conditions.

The lump sum payment on diagnosis — regardless of actual treatment cost — provides the insured with flexibility to use the benefit for treatment costs, income replacement during illness, home care, loan repayment or any other purpose. This flexibility distinguishes critical illness insurance from standard hospitalisation indemnity cover, which only reimburses the specific hospitalisation costs incurred.

Critical illness insurance is available as a standalone policy from general and health insurers or as a rider on life insurance policies. Major providers of standalone critical illness plans include ICICI Lombard, HDFC Ergo, Bajaj Allianz, Max Bupa — now Niva Bupa — and others.

Category Five: Top-Up and Super Top-Up Health Insurance

Top-up health insurance provides additional coverage above a defined deductible — covering hospitalisation costs that exceed the deductible threshold in any single claim. A top-up policy with a ten-lakh deductible pays claims above ten lakhs per event — so if a hospitalisation costs fifteen lakhs, the top-up pays five lakhs after the deductible is met.

Super top-up health insurance is a variant where the deductible is aggregate across all claims in the policy year — rather than per individual claim. A super top-up with a five-lakh aggregate deductible starts paying once total hospitalisation costs in the year exceed five lakhs — providing more comprehensive supplementary coverage than a per-claim deductible structure.

Both top-up and super top-up policies are significantly cheaper than equivalent sum insured increases in the base policy — making them cost-efficient mechanisms for extending total health insurance coverage to higher amounts. They are most useful as complements to an existing base health policy, extending total coverage beyond the base sum insured at a fraction of the cost of increasing the base policy's sum insured.

Category Six: Group Health Insurance

Group health insurance is employer-sponsored or association-sponsored health coverage provided to a group of employees or members under a single master policy. Employers purchase group health insurance from IRDAI-licensed general or health insurers and provide the coverage as an employee benefit, typically without individual medical underwriting.

Group health insurance typically provides lower premiums than equivalent individual policies — because the risk is pooled across a large employed group — and covers pre-existing conditions from day one without waiting periods in most implementations. The coverage ends when the employee leaves the organisation, making it supplementary rather than a substitute for individual or family health insurance that continues irrespective of employment status.

Category Seven: Government-Sponsored Health Insurance Schemes

India has several major government-sponsored health insurance programmes that provide free or highly subsidised hospitalisation coverage to eligible populations — primarily those below the poverty line and economically vulnerable households.

Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana — PM-JAY — is the world's largest government-funded health insurance programme, covering eligible families under the Socio-Economic Caste Census for hospitalisation costs up to five lakhs per family per year at empanelled public and private hospitals. PM-JAY is implemented through IRDAI-licensed insurance companies and the National Health Authority.

State government health schemes — including Rajiv Aarogyasri in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Chief Minister's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme in Tamil Nadu, Karunya Health Scheme in Kerala and others — provide additional coverage in specific states, sometimes complementing PM-JAY for state residents.

Central Government Health Scheme — CGHS — provides comprehensive medical care to central government employees, pensioners and their dependants through a network of CGHS wellness centres and empanelled hospitals.

Employee State Insurance Scheme — ESIC — provides comprehensive medical, maternity, disability and other benefits to eligible employees earning below defined wage thresholds, funded through employer and employee contributions.

Category Eight: Maternity and Newborn Health Insurance

Maternity health insurance covers the costs of childbirth — including pre-natal consultations, delivery charges, post-natal care and in many products the newborn's medical care. Most comprehensive health insurance plans now include maternity cover as a standard or optional feature, subject to a waiting period — typically two to four years — to prevent policyholders from purchasing insurance specifically for an imminent delivery.

Newborn coverage — extending the policy to cover the newborn from birth without requiring separate enrolment — is a feature of many family floater and maternity-enabled health plans. This is particularly important for newborns requiring NICU care, where hospitalisation costs can be substantial.

Category Nine: Disease-Specific Health Insurance

Disease-specific health insurance covers the treatment costs of a specific medical condition — diabetes, cardiac disease, cancer — typically providing comprehensive coverage for the treatment of the defined condition and its complications. Star Health's Diabetes Safe, for example, provides health insurance coverage specifically designed for diabetic patients, including coverage for diabetes-related conditions that might be excluded or subject to long waiting periods under standard health policies.

These specialised products address the gap faced by policyholders with pre-existing conditions who find that standard health insurance either excludes their condition for long waiting periods or imposes premium loadings that make coverage unaffordable.

Category Ten: Arogya Sanjeevani — The Standard Health Insurance Product

Arogya Sanjeevani is the IRDAI-mandated standard health insurance product that every health insurer in India must offer — with defined minimum coverage features, standardised terms and comparable structure across all issuers. Its standardised nature makes premium comparison across insurers straightforward — buyers can compare premiums for identical coverage rather than trying to account for feature differences between products.

Arogya Sanjeevani provides individual and family floater coverage with sums insured ranging from one lakh to five lakhs, covering hospitalisation, pre and post-hospitalisation, daycare procedures, cataract treatment and other standard benefits with defined co-payment and sub-limit structures.

Stashfin provides access to IRDAI-regulated health insurance products across all major categories from multiple licensed insurers. Explore Insurance Plans on Stashfin to compare available options across individual, family floater, senior citizen, critical illness and other health insurance categories.

Insurance products are subject to IRDAI regulations and policy terms. Please read the policy document carefully before purchasing. Stashfin acts as a referral partner only.