Does Health Insurance Cover Laser Hair Removal?

No, your health insurance policy will not provide coverage against any type of laser hair removal treatments, be it hair removal on the face, torso, back, body, or head. There is no provision for insurance companies to provide coverage to policyholders for such treatments.

Why don’t health insurance companies cover laser hair removal?

• The rationale behind this lack of coverage is rather straight-forward. Insurance companies do not consider laser hair removal treatment of any kind to be necessary or critical in nature. It does not come within the classification of necessary lifesaving or life prolonging medical procedures.

• Insurance companies also do not provide coverage for laser hair treatment because if they start providing coverage for it, many policyholders will opt for such treatments. Doing so will tremendously increase the expenses of the insurance company to the tune of hundreds of crores in claim payments.

• This increase in the expenses of insurance companies will have a trickle down impact on all of the policyholders of that particular insurance company. Since the insurance company will need to service this influx of new claims (related to laser hair removal.), the insurance company will be forced to increase the rate of premium of both existing as well as new policyholders.

• This will lead to a chain-reaction where the premium rate of all policyholders across all insurance companies in the country will increase. It would not be a favorable situation towards the insurance companies as well as the policyholders.

• Further, it would lead to less insurance adoption, thereby decreasing the total penetration of insurance in India, which would lead to more people being left out of the safe umbrella of health insurance.

These are some of the pertinent reasons why health insurance companies do not extend insurance coverage to laser hair removal procedures. Along with laser hair removal, insurance companies also do not provide coverage to related procedures like hair transplant surgeries.