Passionate About India

Since the past two weeks, insurance companies proffering health insurance (18 major ones, including four public sector entities) have announced their decision to discontinue the cashless facility. Their argument – the bills from the bigger hospitals are inflated, which in turn is hitting their bottom lines! Reports indicate that the annual premium collected by the health insurers is around Rs. 8,000 crores whereas the outflow in terms of settlements is around Rs. 12,000 crores. Their biggest contention is that certain hospitals do not subscribe to the package rates provided by the insuring companies. And so, as a result, insurance companies have de-listed almost 150 hospitals in Delhi and NCR alone from their list and have also stopped giving cashless facilities to the insured, as of now. In fact, there are four key stakeholders to this current imbroglio. The first is the group of insurance companies; the second are the large hospitals; the third are the state governments (as health is...

At a point in time, when millions of poor and disadvantaged households across the nation are reeling under the scorching rise in prices of basic goods and commodities, the recent announcement of the Government of India (as suggested by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector) to provide a cashless health insurance scheme for the 300 million people below the poverty line, has been a welcome relief! In fact, the scheme was announced by the Honourable Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, during his Union Budget speech this year itself. As per the announcement, the scheme is slated to cover all the 300 million people below the poverty line, within the next five years. It is estimated that the premium per family will come to Rs.750, of which the Centre will be paying 75% and the rest 25% will be borne by the respective state governments. The Planning Commission has announced that the entitlement of the benefits to the people would be determined by the respective st...