Factors Preventing People from Buying Health Insurance Plans!

There are several speculations about unhealthiness spread among a wide population of our country. This holds different reasons for its support, which ultimately have been bringing catastrophic effects at an alarming rate. India is a developing nation, where some people exist who can easily get themselves treated well, while many tend to strive hard for even basic treatment. In this era, the medical costs are soaring high, which exposes this gap.

Although some measures can lessen this trouble such as purchasing a health insurance plan, many people lag here due to low-income, illiteracy, geographical location and so on. These types of factors create tremendous disparities which are overlooked for years and now escalating the healthcare issues. 

A vital cause behind this imbalance in the healthcare area is the difference in the level of medical institutions or hospitals. On one hand, there exist modern and advanced medical clinics that acquire world-class comforts and administrations; on the contrary, there are emergency clinics that are not even equipped with the basic medicinal services. The only solution for this dissimilarity is compulsory medical coverage so that everyone can afford better treatment facilities.

However, while a large number of individuals are striving hard to keep up their well-being in the best manner and simultaneously looking for medical coverage alternatives to cover their medical contingencies, they are finding the health plan in the market quite confusing and costly to opt for. On the other hand, a wide section of the society doesn’t trust the present health insurance environment as they are not convinced and satisfied by the schemes and services offered by some insurers, clinics and diagnostic centres. 

Numerous specialists from the insurance sector hold a similar sort of opinion that current medical coverage plans are very confounded and they need legitimate rearrangements. It is because while purchasing a health cover, generally the customers are first clarified about what all isn't covered (exclusions) in the scheme instead of things which are covered. This makes it hard to purchase medical coverage in contrast with the purchase of a term, home or vehicle protection. This is a significant reason why numerous individuals lean toward remaining secured under their employer's issued medical coverage despite purchasing an individual health plan. 

According to a report pronounced by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), in the budgetary year 2017-18, General Insurance organizations issued around 1.47 crore health insurance schemes that secured more than 48 crore people with which the insurance providing firms registered a hike of 10% in the numbers of covered lives. However, a significant difference has been exposed between the count of individuals protected under an individual plan and in the number of individuals safeguarded under group health insurance plans. 

According to another report, 75% of the total number of covered people are secured under government-driven schemes, while 19% are covered under group medical coverage, provided by the employers. This goes to show that the percentage of lives safeguarded under an individual health plan is just 6, which is after a fall of 7% from 13% in the financial year 2013-14. Over the last few years, there has been a generous increment in the number of individuals falling prey to lifestyle ailments. The people are seen suffering from high cholesterol,

high or low blood pressure, diabetes and hypertension have considerably gone up. Additionally, the age of people experiencing such diseases is underneath 45 years, which is an issue of huge concern. Another significant sickness influencing youthful people is acidity related sufferings which shows a rise of 35% over the most recent 5 years. These reports corroborate that health insurance policies are the need of the hour for everyone. 

As per the health insurance market experts, exclusions and complexity involved in a health insurance plan play a significant role in the selection process of health plans. Besides these, claim settlement processes also considered to be crucial in choosing the insurers as many health insurance providers experience adverse effects of a great deal due to their bad reputation pertaining to case settlement procedure and proportion. These factors make customers lose trust and enhance the complexity of health insurance policies, which result in the downfall of the plan purchase. 

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Working on these 3 areas can show the insurance companies a remarkable increase in their customer base. Introducing a standard health plan across all insurers, which is available at a reasonable rate and within everyone’s reach is the simplest way to gain the trust of the customers. A standardised product will not just make it easier for the consumers to understand and compare health policies, but eventually, it will also help them in porting their health insurance policies amongst various insurers without any hassle.