Govt. to offer incentives to private hospitals to accelerate insurance programme

In order to take part in the health insurance program “Modicare”, the government will offer incentives to private hospitals, according to a senior government official. Launched last year, the “Modicare” program offers families health cover of up to 500,000 rupees ($7,000) a year for serious ailments – a significant amount by Indian standards – but the scheme has struggled to gain traction. India has so far registered about 20% of the eligible 500 million people, due to lack of public awareness of the scheme and low private sector participation, said Indu Bhushan, CEO of the National Health Authority (NHA), which runs the program. “There is a challenge of creating awareness and building the required infrastructure. We need to work more on awareness … give us time,” Bhusan said. He further added that under the program, more than 6 million people have so far received treatment free of charge. Presently, 60% of the approximately 20,000 hospitals registered under the program are in the private sector, Bhushan said, adding that increasing their participation was critical to the scheme’s success. With the aim of expanding the scheme more swiftly, however, the NHA was likely to seek at least 80 billion rupees for next year, 30% more than its current annual budget, in accordance with the information from a source. “In the next year, the scheme should be quite well-known across the country,” Bhushan said.