Top-up health insurance plans offer you an additional coverage, which is beyond the maximum limit of your existing health insurance policy. For instance, suppose you are part of a group health cover of Rs. 3 lakh and have Rs. 10 lakh topup cover. In case of a health claim of Rs. 5 lakh, the top-up will pay Rs.2 lakh, which is over and above the Rs. 3 lakh on your group cover. Top-ups come handy when the threshold of the existing health cover is already used or exhausted and there are some medical costs left to deal with, which would otherwise exert pressure on your financial savings. It is not mandatory for you to have a health insurance plan to add a top-up, you can self fund the threshold by way of what is known as mandatory deductible, with the top-up coming into effect once this is paid for. The limitation with top-up is that it pays a sum only above the threshold and does not consider the overall claims in a year, and treats each claim as a fresh threshold. So, in a year if you incur two claims of Rs. 5 lakh each, which means a total claim of Rs. 10

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