Health insurance in India at a glance
The nation of India with a population of 1000 million experiences a vast inequity that exists in the healthcare industry with barely 3 per cent of the population covered by some form of health insurance, either social or private. The guiding principle of Bhore Committee in 1946 that ‘no individual should fail to secure adequate medical care because of inability to pay for it’ looks unreachable still, after 50 years of Indian independence.
In India, presently the health insurance exists in the form of Mediclaim policy offered to the individual or to any group, association or corporate bodies. Although, total expenditure on health in India is nearly 6 per cent of the entire GDP, the government spending is less than 25 per cent against the average spending of 30-40 per cent in other developing countries. Penetration of Mediclaim is currently done by state-owned insurance companies, covering only about 2.5 million people i.e. less than 0.50 per cent of the country’s population.
In Alma Ata (in old USSR), a global initiative towards health-related research and action was held in 1978. All the participants, including India, affirmed to ensure health for all by the year 2000, with primary health care as their top priority. But India perhaps understood it in a different manner what Plato said “Attention to health is the greatest hindrance in life”. Indian health insurance sector is still an immature baby, victim of ‘no common sense’ of government.
The primary health care system in India is managed mainly by the shallow structure of government health-care facilities and other public-health care systems in a traditional model of health funding and provision. But, it is unable to justify the demand for health security for 200 million Indian health insurable population mainly due to service costs being out of the reach of many people, absence of good and effective number of physicians, low rate of education programs, less number of hospitals, poor medical equipment and over all, the poor budget of government towards the health program.
Even Social insurance schemes available in India, such as the Employee State insurance Scheme (ESIS) and Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) have restricted coverage to a very small segment of the population, around 3 per cent.
Therefore, the health insurance policy in India is nothing but a burden of inefficiency of a government run system. Moreover, the uncontrolled and no-innovative attitude of Indian bureaucracy always argued against the private players in the health insurance sector in India. Albert Einstein surly sleeps happily in the grave after seeing the Indian government’s practice of health management credo based on what he said fifty years back, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen”. Unnecessary prejudice never allows our government to open the doors of health insurance to others.