Diabetes and Insurance

Abstract

India has healthcare expenditure of more than 5 billion dollars on diabetes-related healthcare management. Globally, approximately 12% of health expenditure is spent on diabetes and related comorbidities. Hospitalization includes hospital and laboratory expenses and cost of medications as the direct cost. India is among the countries, where if the insured dies during the time period specified in the insurance policy and the policy is active, or in force, then a death benefit will be paid. Studies in India reported that medical reimbursement is availed by 21.3% in the high-income group and only 6.4% of the urban low-income group. An average cost of management of diabetic complications like diabetic foot, retinopathy, and patients with two complications was almost close to the average cost of claimed amount. Patients may be advised to take insurance for diabetes when there is any indication of future disease and risk factors contributing to diabetes like a strong family history, obesity, hypertension, and other vascular diseases. Diabetes Safe from Star Health and Varistha Mediclaim from National Insurance were among the first insurance policies to be launched in India.

Coordination between hospitals and insurers in developing economies: an interpretive structural modeling approach

“…Low-income people as compared to high-income people are much more likely to skip care because of financial reasons (Yip and Mahal, 2008). For the people who had insurance cover at some point of time, it has been reported that only 21.3% of high income group people and 6.4% of low income group people are actually able to get their medical reimbursement because their medication period falls beyond the coverage period (Ghosh et al, 2019). Hence, it has been observed that health insurance should have reasonable premium so that it can be made affordable for people with low purchasing power (V. Babu, 2020).…”