IRDAI sets up 15 member Health Insurance Consultative Committee to increase Health Insurance Penetration in India

"The Health Consultative Committee would meet physically or virtually at least once a quarter and more frequently, if necessary," the order further stated.

Speaking to Medical Dialogues in this regard, Dr. Alexander Thomas, the President of ANBAI said, "The main aim of the programme is to ensure that there is greater insurance penetration -both government and private- across the entire country with an objective of providing affordable quality care to the entire population and patients."

"As you know that in recent times insurance penetration has increased from 5 to 40 percent and with the Government schemes this number will be further going up to even 80-90 percent of coverage. Therefore we want to ensure that insurance penetrates to every part of India and healthcare becomes affordable to people," he further mentioned.

"It is very important that quality care is maintained. So, our aim is to increase the insurance penetration with the objective of providing affordable and accessible quality care to everybody," Dr. Thomas added.

The terms of reference of the Committee are as follows:

a) Arrive at ways and means to increase the penetration of health insurance in India including identifying issues and challenges in the entire value chain and making recommendations to overcome them.

b) Identify challenges in carrying out health insurance business smoothly and make recommendations to facilitate ease of doing business.

c) Identify the changing dynamics in healthcare and make recommendations regarding appropriate product designs including a universal standard product that is basic and simple.

d) Identify concerns relating to policyholder servicing as well as awareness and make recommendations to address them.

e) Make recommendations regarding standardisation of procedures amongst providers including for capture, collation and analysis of data.

f) Make recommendations to put in place systems for servicing health insurance that can plug into the e-platform envisaged by IRDAI

g) Any other matter which would help in the growth of insurance penetration and deepen health insurance inclusion.

To view the order, click on the link below.

https://medicaldialogues.in/pdf_upload/irdai-order-189070.pdf

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