Integrating Health Insurance for the Poor into the Indian Insurance Scenario

Abstract

The financial consequence of illness is a major risk for any household. For many poor households and for the Indian society as a whole, exposure to this risk is comparable to major catastrophes like Asia's Tsunami. The discussion surrounding how to respond to the tsunami disaster focused largely on what government could do through relief programs and early warning systems, with amazingly little attention to what insurance could have done to mitigate risks and reduce personal destitution. Similar focus is given in the discussion on the lack of access to healthcare for poor and rural population segments in India, a problem that causes many more preventable deaths than the tsunami has, and which has been around much longer. In this article we offer a few ideas on how health insurance can be made available to poor people within the framework of open competition between multiple insurers (7 references cited).

Keywords: micro health insurance, social insurance, insurance for the poor, community based health insurance, health financing