Today, the low-income segment of India cannot afford to fund the rising costs of healthcare expenses. Both regular health expenses and 'health shocks' place them at a very vulnerable position - the prospect of being caught in a 'poverty trap'.
Yet their enrolment in conventional health insurance products is very low. Because low income families are reluctant to part with scarce funds in the form of a 'hard to afford' insurance premium for expenditures which have only a fairly low frequency (1 admission per family every 2-4 years) of occurring within their very short financial time horizon. They place a high discount-rate on 'cash in hand' and consider financial unpredictability (due to a health event) as a acceptable risk.
Hardened to the risks in life, peace of mind alone is not sufficient. Our attempt is to offer them a healthplan which has tangible benefits - designed to be easy-to-understand, affordable in pricing, available at high quality and accredited providers, has voluntary enrolment and encapsulates a larger bouquet of health benefits (discounted drugs and consultation, preventive / promotive education - and not just restricted to in-patient or hospitalisation cases).
With such a health-plan, we believe we will have an answer to the often quoted complaint of a low income family reluctant to renew a health insurance policy - "I have paid my premium but didn't go to hospital, so what value did I get from my membership?"
If and when we manage to achieve this goal, we believe that the social impact would be tremendous -
- 50% of the customers availing cashless hospitalisation would have been saved from being
caught in a 'poverty trap'
- Almost all families would have experience a reduction of 30-40% on regular health expenses
- Overall health amongst our customers will improve - most diseases would be identified and
addressed at the source itself
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