The Hindu Business Line : `CAR for stand-alone health insurers must be much lower'

THE stipulations pertaining to capital adequacy ratio for standalone health insurance companies needs to be brought down significantly if the country were to transform its healthcare service industry towards `wellness' management from the `existing disease' management.

The largescale promotion of health insurance would help bring down the overall cost of healthcare for the population at large, according to the Chairman of Apollo Hospitals, Dr Pratap C. Reddy; the Chairman of Max India Ltd, Mr Analjit Singh; and the Managing Director of Apollo Health Street, Ms Sangita Reddy.

Addressing a Healthcare & Pharma Summit-2005 organised by the Healthcare Club of Indian School of Business here, they said the country would need over $30 billion to support the healthcare needs of the population in the next 10 years.

Apart from bringing down the cost of healthcare, Ms Reddy also stressed on the need for the Government to adopt an integrated healthcare policy in the place of existing fragmented approach. The Government should also announce the national health insurance policy at the earliest.

Advocating the need for large-scale promotion of health insurance in the country, Ms Reddy stressed on the need to encourage healthcare in the public-private partnership model, adopt information technology for taking the quality healthcare to the doorsteps of rural population and also to standardise healthcare services.

Viewing that the technology is currently under-utilised in the country for offering quality healthcare to the masses, Dr Pratap Reddy, speaking through videoconference, stressed the need to use the telemedicine route for meeting the quality healthcare needs of rural population. According to him, healthcare is one of the largest industries that can offer large-scale employment opportunities and also earn huge foreign exchange. According to Mr Analjit Singh, healthcare is a highly capital-intensive industry and also offers large opportunities in the areas of marketing, supply chain management and human resources for management graduates.

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