No health insurance for more than 80% population | Fusion - WeRIndia

A new report has showed that there are about 21.6 crore people in the country who are covered under health insurance. Even though there was a lot of liberalization of the insurance sector, it is surprising to find that barely one fifth of the population is covered under health insurance.

Central Bureau of Health Intelligence’s National Health Profile 2015 has shown that even among people with some type of coverage, 67% are covered by public health insurance companies.

The report shows that even though there was a declining share of the Centre towards public health expenditure, it did better in providing insurance cover compared to private sector.

Except the family floater policies, public insurance companies have a higher share of coverage and premium for all types of policies. Family floater policies are policies which lets the family claim the insurance benefit of a person.

The report also stated that there were around 15.5 crore people who are covered under the three Central government funded health schemes.

India’s high out of pocket expenditure on health clearly shows a low public health spending along with lack of health insurance penetration.

With these conditions, it is not surprising to find that 80 percent of expenditure people have to pay themselves in rural India is on medicine. Even in urban areas it is around 75 percent. The fee for doctors accounted between 11-14 percent while diagnostic tests accounted for 7-8 percent.

The public expenditure on health was 1.08 percent of GDP in the year 2012-13. The Centre-State share in that expenditure stood at 33:67.

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