An Overview of Health Insurance from Indian Scenario

Health is the most vital socio-economic aspect of every individual‟s life in the economy. Health is an essential factor for creative activities in the country. Health of an individual can be considered as important social asset. Hence to meet health needs of the healthy citizens and society, health services acts as an outcome for the government. Present paper attempts to study existing central government health insurance programmes in India and to offer suitable suggestions towards improvement of health sector in India. During 1986 Health Insurance in India was launched. A remarkable growth has been observed during the era of policy of 1991, the Indian health care system was characterized by low level of public expenditure on health care, poor quality in health care services. Health insurance programmes acts as a boon to different groups of the community and these have helped to reduce out of pocket expenditure on the part of people. The present health programmes of the central government have better addressed the need for increasing public spending on health care, focus on preventative health care, ensuring greater access to BPL community, and significantly has improved the productivity of public expenditure. The paper intends to study all the existing health insurance schemes from Employees‟ State Insurance Scheme of 1952 to Ayushman Bharat of 2018.