Health Insurance Penetration and Awareness in Punjab

Abstract

Indian insurance markets are among the fastest growing markets in th e world. Health insurance is one of the world 's fastest growing insurance products. Thus health insurance is having the highest growth potential in India with 1.15 bn population. But the growth potential of health insurance has alway remained untapped in India for many reasons. Hea lth care is finan ced through general ta x revenue, community financing, out of pocket payment and social and private health insurance schemes. India spends about 4.9 % of GDP on health (WHR, 2002). The per capita total expenditure on health in India is US$ 23, of which the per capita Government expenditure on health is US$ 4. Hence, it is seen that the total health expenditure is around 4.9% of GDP, with breakdown of public expend iture (0. 9%); private expend iture (4.0%). The private expenditu re ca n be further classified as out-of-pocket (OOP) expend iture (3. 6%) and employees/community financing (0.4%). It is thus ev ident that publi c hea lth investm ent has been comparatively low. Thi s paper attempts to analy e awareness of health insurance and various reasons of low penetration in Punj ab like less promoti onal measure, high laim ratio, in reas ing litigation with cu tomers, dissati fa tion among the insuring public for loading of premium as well as rejection of claims, delay by the TPA's to process cashl ess hospitalisation , delay by insurers in payments to TPA's and overcharging by hospitals to insureds.