Health Insurance Under A Cloud As COVID–19 Rages

With a spike in cases insurance companies are acting pricey while private hospitals are changing patients for PPE kits

- Jeevan Prakash, Anagh Pal and Nirmala Konjengbam

Everybody has seen those social media forwards. A picture of private hospital charges for COVID-19 patients: a list of services, with astronomical figures that could cause a cardiac arrest even in the healthy. That one picture frames the famine of health resources Indian consumers face right now. It’s a pincer grip—scarcity at one end, and sheer unaffordability at the other, unfolding just like a famine.

The early reprieve India got during the COVID-19 pandemic now seems a distant story. The very nightmare the lockdown sought to prevent is now upon us. Existing hospital capacities are swamped.

We have an active caseload of 2 lakh-plus, leaping up by 16,000+ every day. The turnover of the sick is so huge that governments, both at the Centre and in states, have inevitably turned to private hospitals. But that has brought in the inevitable question: who’ll foot the bill?

This is where the insurance drama begins. The biggest bone of contention: insurance companies refusing to reimburse patients. Consumers are understandably angry at private hospitals for seemingly profiteering from a calamity—at a time when India’s wallet is thin. Hospitals have their own reasons and sob stories; yet, the government has moved to cap charges in places like Delhi. But why are insurance companies acting pricey? Because a pandemic is an unprecedented situation even for them.