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/Non-Payable Items Cover
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What is Non-Payable Items Cover in health insurance?
Hospitals charge for many small items - gloves, syringes, bandages, sanitisers - that most insurers refuse to pay for by default. These non-payable items can make up 10-20% of your bill. This feature ensures your insurer covers those costs too, so you face fewer surprise deductions at discharge.
Also called: consumables cover · non-medical expenses cover · List I non-payable items
What counts as a non-payable item?
The regulator fixes this list and every policy wording we hold reproduces it - 146 items in four groups.
List I - not paid by the policy68 items
The hospital may bill these separately, but a health policy does not pay for them. Whether a plan pays for them anyway is exactly what the plan rows below compare.
- Baby food
- Baby utilities charges
- Beauty services
- Belts/braces
- Buds
- Cold pack/hot pack
- Carry bags
- Email/internet charges
- Food charges (other than patient's diet provided by hospital)
- Leggings
- Laundry charges
- Mineral water
- Sanitary pad
- Telephone charges
- Guest services
- Crepe bandage
- Diaper of any type
- Eyelet collar
- Slings
- Blood grouping and cross matching of donors' samples
- Service charges where nursing charge also charged
- Television charges
- Surcharges
- Attendant charges
Source: IRDAI's standard list of non-medical items (Lists I to IV), printed as an annexure in every policy wording we hold. Transcribed from the Optima Secure policy wording (UIN HDFHLIP26058V082526), Annexure B, and checked against the Activ Care policy wording (UIN ADIHLIP21062V022021), Annexure I.
Aditya Birla
Activ One – MAX
StrongCommonly Missed
Claim Protect pays the hospital's non-medical items - gloves, syringes, bandages, sanitisers and the rest of Annexure I's four lists - up to the Sum Insured, so they are not deducted at discharge. It is built into six of the seven plans; on NXT you buy it as an optional cover.
Coverage detailstap any row to understand it
Star Health
Star Health Assure
StrongCommonly Missed
The consumables most insurers refuse - gloves, masks, syringes, nebulisation kits, ECG electrodes and the rest of the IRDAI List I - are paid whenever an in-patient or day care claim is admitted, up to the Sum Insured with no separate cap. These items often make up 10 to 20% of a hospital bill.
Coverage detailstap any row to understand it
Watch out
The cover runs off the admitted claim, so if the hospitalisation claim itself is rejected the consumables go with it.
HDFC ERGO
Optima Secure – Optima-Secure
StrongCommonly Missed
The Protect Benefit pays the non-medical items hospitals bill for - gloves, syringes, masks, nebuliser kits, admission charges - that insurers normally reject. It is built into most plans, optional on Optima Select and Optima Lite, and absent from Optima Suraksha.
Coverage detailstap any row to understand it
Watch out
These items commonly run to 10-20% of a hospital bill, so on a ₹4,00,000 stay that is ₹40,000 to ₹80,000. On plans where Protect Benefit is optional, it must be chosen at policy start or at a renewal, and it only pays if your Policy Schedule shows it in force.
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