subject: Can Insurance For Health Be Affordable? [print this page] The authorities have for long been grappling with the problem of the lack of coverage in terms of health insurance for a large part of the population. The insurance coverage scenario has, no doubt, improved a lot in the last few decades and the number of people in terms of coverage of health insurance has increased commendably.
In terms of percentage, more people are covered under the health insurance sector and affordable health insurance plans.
But the overall scenario still needs to improve a lot. Many experts are of the opinion that the grim scenario is because of the high costs of insurance that is depriving many people from subscribing to policies.
The health insurance sector has undergone many changes since the last few decades. Health insurance has moved from being an exclusive governmental action to being a business area of the private players. The advantage of having a lot of private players in this sector meant that there were more competition to attract more customers.
These players offered policies that were intended to beat their rivals and attract more customers. As a result, the price of these policies were driven up and the health insurance was slowly moving beyond the realms of affordable health insurance. This directly impacted people who belonged to the less privileged sections of the society and they could not enroll for the health policies.
The developments in the insurance sector had a direct bearing on the lives of the people who belonged to the less privileged sections of the society. High costs of insurance meant that they have effectively turned away from health insurance and to them; affordable health insurance had become a myth.
This dramatically reduced the insurance cover of many people and resulted in the reduction in the overall percentage of insurance coverage.
What made things worst was that some people, who had stretched their finances to enroll for a policy dropped out after a period of time, after being unable to continue paying the high premiums for a sustained duration to obtain the benefits in the long term.
The situation could be made better if the strategies are right. First, the government has to enter the fray with renewed force as a lawmaker and as a cheap health insurance policy provider.
The government will, as part of its social commitments, provide cheap health insurance, especially to the people who belong to the less privileged sections of the society.
Second, the private insurance players need to tailor their insurance policies so that they can provide cheap health insurance to the deprived. In other words, the emphasis would be on increasing the coverage of insurance and include everybody.
by: Tim Gaffey
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