White Paper on Health Insurance Launched
Faster Health Insurance key to ensuring needed healthcare access in India:
With increasing healthcare awareness in the country, a whitepaper released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and India Health Progress recommends health insurance as one of the key pillars for among the economically challenged patients. This was released at Dr Marri Channa Reddy Human Resource Development Institute, Hyderabad.Despite the importance of health insurance, less than 15 per cent of Indian population is covered under this, including under government-supported schemes. Only around 2.2 per cent is covered under private health insurance, of which rural health insurance penetration is less than 10 per cent.
This paper highlights the issues afflicting the health insurance sector, taking into account the views of industry stakeholders — patients, physicians, insurance service providers, hospitals, as well as Government and regulatory representatives.
Speaking on the occasion Sujay Shetty, Leader – Pharma Life Sciences, PricewaterhouseCoopers said, “India’s diverse population has limited purchasing power. Penetrating this market therefore requires innovative insurance products at multiple price points. But innovation in the current Indian health insurance market needs to evolve considerably. Low-priced insurance products can play a big role in ensuring higher healthcare access for poor sections of the society.”
The whitepaper is the outcome of a roundtable meeting held on January 24, 2011 on Health Insurance at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, Delhi. The conference was attended by various government and industry leaders from Insurance, Pharmaceutical and Health sector as well as doctors.
“Health insurance is particularly critical for people living below the poverty line (BPL). This is because an illness is especially threatening for BPL families. Not only is it a threat to their income earning capacity, it could also result in the family falling into a debt trap”, said Ranga Iyer, Healthcare Consultant.
It recommends a new business model under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to create demand for insurance products.
“Affordability of healthcare by low income sections of the society is a matter of concern when it comes to healthcare access. Also, the out of pocket spending by middle income families on healthcare leads to economic depletion hence affecting their overall health needs. Health insurance help in a long way to solve this issue”, said Aman Gupta, Principal Advisor, India Health Progress.
Another recommendation was to reduce the premiums and collection costs particularly for the people from rural regions. For this the government needs to facilitate the creation of a Distribution Network or system so that insurers need not spend huge amounts on field staff and infrastructure to collect premiums. And also, the insurance companies could be encouraged to tie up with telecom operators or other companies with a presence in rural and hinterland regions to collect premiums or enroll new customers via an ad hoc distribution network.
EH News Bureau
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