Coming under cover soon: mental illnesses and alternative treatments

With mental illnesses ris­ing, the Insurance Regula­tory Development Authori­ty wants insurers to start of­fering covers for that.

“Right now, mental ill­ness is not covered. It needs to be covered because I think as the society is be­coming more modern, all kinds of mental illnesses are cropping up,” said J Hari Narayan, Irda chairman.

However, the issue is at a conceptual stage and stake­holders are yet to take a fi­nal call on it, he said.

Irda is also telling insurers to design policies to in­clude alternative systems of medicine.”There has been a greater concern on coverage for Ayush. Ayush is a generic term for alternative systems of medicine and in India, there are many types of al­ternative systems that are found to be effective. There is an increasing need (for coverage) perhaps. But how to capture that in insurance format needs to be looked at,” he added.

Extending health cover to HIV/AIDS people is another issue that has drawn the at­tention of the regulator.

K V Ramana l DNA