Healthcare has to be a priority - millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Y have successfully spotted this. Subsequently, they have started building healthier habits and brought in significant lifestyle habits. Unfortunately, while these habits might help individuals to stay active, one can’t avoid hospitalisations. Much of this risk can be attributed to remote work cultures, the pressure of working in corporate sectors, in short, a sedentary lifestyle, deteriorating food quality, and the onset of scary sudden pandemics like COVID-19.
Now, let’s come to the journey of hospitalisation. You are naturally looking at frequent visits to a physician/specialist followed by multiple diagnostic tests, a pre-procedure check-up, and the entire hospitalisation. Then, after being discharged, you start to look at long pharmacy bills. Physiotherapy, home care, and more. Sounds like a familiar arc, right?
However, here’s something that you probably know but are partially oblivious to—the cost involved in this entire journey is scary! Over the decades, healthcare services have adopted cutting-edge technologies that have successfully boosted life expectancy and quality of life factors. Unfortunately, these very same reasons, accompanied by prominent medical inflation, have spiked the cost of healthcare services.
This means your healthcare services will take a massive bite out of your savings that might eventually (or even currently) lead to a financial crunch. To prevent this, you need a health insurance policy. Quite naturally, the sale and demand of these policies from the best insurers have shot north.
But these are merely words! Why would you believe us (although we hope you do!)? So, this blog presents a list of healthcare statistics that will prove our point. However, first, we must cover our bases a bit, focusing primarily on health insurance and its importance in India in 2024.
What is health insurance?
A health insurance policy is a financial tool meant to offer substantial funding during times of medical scare. Such funding is created to shield your savings during hospitalisation and thus offer you access to premium healthcare services/specialists without taking a toll on your life’s earnings.
Health insurance policies come with affordable premiums and offer certain flexibility via their add-ons so that the plan can be customised per your financial bandwidth and medical status. If you plan to buy a health insurance policy, you will need to focus on 2 fronts primarily -
| Choosing the best health insurance provider |
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|---|---|
| Choosing the best health insurance plan |
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Once you have chosen the best health insurance plan that matches your medical and financial requirements, you are all set!
However, the issue that needs to be addressed is: What is the state of healthcare in India that makes it a mandate for you to purchase a health insurance plan? Let’s find out!
Healthcare in India in 2024
Let’s start on a good note—India is a hotspot for medical tourism. Thanks to affordable treatment/surgery options, an abundance of specialisation in healthcare offerings, new research facilities, and more, medical tourism contributes a good share of the country’s GDP.
Subsequently,
- India’s hospital market (USD 98.98 billion in 2023)is projected to increase by 8% to USD 193.59 billion from 2024 to 2032.
- The Indian telemedicine market is expected to reach USD 5.4 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 31%.
- The hiring in the healthcare sector will also increase by 15 - 20% in 2024. The industry is currently one of the largest employers in the country and has hired 7.5 million people in total by 2024.
- Overall, the Indian healthcare market (US$ 110 billion in 2016) is estimated to reach US$ 638 billion by 2025.
The above improvements across the healthcare industry also resulted from the awareness created after the pandemic. During the first phase of COVID-19, India came to its knees like the rest of the world. Our medical and healthcare infrastructure was less than optimal for acting as a support system during such global mayhem.
However, as time passed, the nation stood firm and battled its pandemic demons by being one of the countries that offered vaccinations to other countries. Medical awareness grew in leaps and bounds following this outbreak and the management of the same. Following this, the health insurance penetration grew substantially.
Why are health insurance plans popular in India in 2024?
We bet you had heard more about life insurance than mediclaims (the archaic version of health insurance plans) before 2020!
However, the scale now stands balanced, with the health insurance sector receiving the attention it always deserved. However, apart from the pandemic, what other factors acted as catalysts for this change? Have the features and prioritisation of perks in vanilla health insurance plans also undergone any significant changes? Let’s find out!
- Medical Inflation: The HRI has projected a 7% year-on-year growth for 2024 regarding healthcare costs, a definite increase from 2023 (6%). While the general inflation across industries across the globe has undergone a significant spike, the medical industry isn’t far behind, growing by 0.5% - 1% each year. Naturally, such rising cost of healthcare services and increased inflation across the rest of the market means either of these two situations will arise - your finances will dry up to access quality healthcare services, or you will compromise on healthcare quality to safeguard your savings.
This means you need a health insurance plan from a top-notch health insurer.
- Pandemic outbreak: As stated before, the pandemic was an eye-opener. Following the pandemic, India’s overall insurance sector and the health insurance sector in particular experienced an immense spike. From an increase in the coverage amount opted for to an increase in the number of policies offering OPD coverage, the whole face of India’s health insurance has gone through a significant break over the last 4 years. What the IRDAI had been trying to do for years (increase insurance penetration), the pandemic succeeded in a couple of years!
- Increase in lifestyle ailments: What was a matter of “no other options” has now become a matter of priority and demand—the remote work culture. Companies across the globe have realised that the access to superior talents from across the globe offered by remote work is an opportunity that they can’t pass on. On the other hand, employees have started enjoying the comfort of working remotely from their homes.
Unfortunately, this has further exacerbated the cause of a sedentary lifestyle. Screen time has increased, and now we have far more complicated lifestyle ailments, which may lead to chronic diseases, thereby leading to multiple hospitalisations. The costs of such visits and procedures/treatments indicate the need for health insurance policies.
What are the health insurance statistics for India in 2024?
Health insurance sector statistics were not exactly easy to find before 2024. It took time to get an update on these numbers, but not anymore! With the abundance of information that we have now, we have sorted the health insurance statistics for India in 2024 into categories.
It’s time to prove, in numbers, what we have been saying over videos, Instagram, Twitter, and blogs!
- The Popularity
- In 2021, health insurance schemes covered about 514 million people in India, only 37% of the country's population.
- Around 70% of people have public or private health insurance, leaving about 30%, or over 400 million individuals, without health insurance.
2. Health Insurance Premiums
- In 2021, India's health insurance industry's gross written premium exceeded INR 637 billion.
- Public-sector health insurers recorded premiums worth INR 272 billion, private-sector health insurers accounted for nearly INR 159 billion, and standalone health insurers recorded around INR 151 billion.
According to the Economic Survey 2022-23, the Indian government's budgeted expenditure on healthcare nearly reached 2.1 % of GDP in FY23 and 2.2% in FY22, up from 0.6% in FY21.
The survey also highlighted an increase in the share of expenditure on healthcare services, rising from 21% in FY19 to 26% in FY23.
In fiscal year 2019, out-of-pocket payments accounted for nearly 48% of India's healthcare spending, a significant decline from 64.2% in FY14. Social security costs on health increased from 6% in FY14 to 9.6% in FY19.
3. State-wise health insurance coverage
- In 2021, Maharashtra recorded India's principal share of health insurance premiums. At 32%, the southwestern state accounted for health insurance premiums worth over INR 183 billion. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka followed at 10% that year.
| States | % of Families Covered Under Health Insurance
(at least 1 family member is covered) |
|---|---|
| Rajasthan | 88% |
| Kerala | 58% |
| Andhra Pradesh | 80% |
| Mizoram | 50% |
| Goa | 73% |
| Gujarat | 44% |
| Chhattisgarh | 71% |
| Himachal Pradesh | 39% |
| Tripura | 36% |
| Assam | 67% |
| West Bengal | 34% |
| Telangana | 69% |
| Nagaland | 22% |
| Karnataka | 32% |
| Bihar | 17% |
| Delhi | 25% |
| Maharashtra | 22% |
| Jammu and Kashmir | 14% |
| Sikkim | 28% |
What are the best health insurance policies in India for 2024?
To be honest, at Ditto, we have experienced growth in client enquiry and awareness about health insurance policies, too. Naturally, we were glad to offer our assistance as we explained to them how the best health insurance plans were sorted.
Here is a list of the best health insurance policies as per recommendations from our experts -