KB Vijay Shrinivas, GM, National Insurance Company started off by giving a background on the work the National Insurance Company does in the field for healthcare. He highlighted the statistic on GDP spending and health outlay in India. He said that India’s contribution on health is below countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh and slightly better than Myanmar.
Shrinivas, pointed out on the lack of manpower and capacity of hospital beds and said that there is a huge opportunity for healthcare providers from the private sector as well as government to bridge this gap. After expounding on the current scenario and the need of the hour to strengthen India’s healthcare system, he went on to say, “I have always felt that we are being talking about healthcare, but it is not healthcare, it is ailment care. Health is nowhere in the picture. Nobody wants to talk about good health. They want to talk about ailments because that’s where money is. So, we need to change the focus for ailment care to healthcare. Infact, I strongly believe that Baba Ramdev has contributed more to healthcare, than hospitals. Hospitals should be just one portion of the entire gamut of healthcare, but that has acquired preeminence. They is no money in telling a person to go for a morning walk everyday. Perhaps, that motivation is missing to focus on good health.”
Moving forward, he spoke on an initiative that they have started which involves a summit and where they intend to connect wellness with health insurance. “Currently, health insurance is also ailment insurance and therefore, we have tried to integrate both. Across the world, there is a wide spectrum of models for healthcare or ailment care- from one end of the spectrum where the government leaves each citizen to take care of themselves and the other where the government takes responsibility of the people’s health. In between, there are models where the government funds the people and the private providers offer health services. All this cost money. One way of accruing the cost is from tax revenues. In India, we are seeing an increasing trend of tax revenues being utilised for funding health programmes. Second is out-of-pocket, which is major issue in India and third is insurance.”
After explaining how insurance can play a key role to bring down costs, he says that NHPS can be another game changer for India.