After attending a conference held last week in which corporate hospitals from across the State participated, I returned to work wondering about the emphasis on health insurance and universal healthcare. The conference began with a session on health insurance, and United India Insurance chairman G. Srinivasan set the tone by stating that only 17 per cent of Indians were covered.
It is not just a lack of awareness about insurance, but also a lack of products in the wellness and preventive care segment and the high cost of insurance premiums that are responsible for fewer people choosing to insure themselves, he said.
We live in denial of an unfortunate occurrence. Sometime ago, around 150 children with genetic disorders appealed to the State government to support them. Many of these children will have to manage with assistive appliances, as medicines are available only for a few genetic conditions but are unaffordable. For one such condition, a dose costs as much as Rs. 1 crore. I wondered how much a family should invest in insurance in such cases.
For the past three years, the State government has been trying to put in place an insurance scheme to enable those with low incomes to seek medical treatment. The second effort in this direction has seen improvement in terms of coverage and treatment. Principal Secretary for Health Girija Vaidyanathan, who said that the State government was focussed on improving the health of women and children in the State, also admitted that “our insurance scheme [the chief minister’s comprehensive health insurance scheme] has potential to improve”.
The cost that a healthcare consumer will incur in the future became apparent when the Confederation of Indian Industry, which organised the conference, observed that in 2012, India is expected to spend eight per cent of its GDP on healthcare. In 2009, it was 5.5 per cent. According to the CII, by 2015 the Indian healthcare industry would be worth US $ 100 billion.
Nearly 80 per cent of Indians pay out of their pockets for medical care. I know of people who have sold their property to pay for a much-needed procedure and ended up in debt. Sometimes, they opt out of expensive treatments. With that being the case, how much should a person invest in a health insurance policy?
