Health insurance for Rs20/month?

Devi Shetty, chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya, is working on a module to formulate a unique insurance platform for the common man at just Rs20.

Announcing the plan, Shetty said that he was working with the National Innovative Council for making a unique insurance policy which will be presented to the central government.

Speaking at the press conference of cloud ready applications of ICT Health enable Narayana Hrudayalaya’s care delivery network, he said: “Over 900 million mobile users in the country are paying about Rs150 a month for mobile phone usage. The central government can make it mandatory for them to pay Rs20 and we can build the most robust insurance system in the world.”

Once the presentation of the plan is made, it will be submitted to the central government to be made part of the 12th five year plan.

Stressing on the need for IT in health care, Shetty said even in countries such as the US, IT penetration was poor,

"It is used only for printing bills or getting insurance from patients,” he said.

“In the US too, less than 10 per cent to 15 per cent of IT penetration takes place in health care. In fact, every 24 hours, one out of 200 people die due to medical error. It could be due to process error or protocol error. In the US, going to a hospital is 10 times more risky than sky diving,” he said. Insisting on a law to bring the policy for prescription of drugs after verifying it on a software, he said: “Over 10,000 people die in the US due to wrong prescriptions. If there is a law where prescriptions are given based on a software which can detect if a particular drug is having interaction with another prescribed drug,  such incidences can be reduced,” he said.

He pointed out that many doctors feel insecure in using IT.  “Doctors are scared of using IT and software as they fear it will belittle their importance. In 10 years, doctors will have to get a second opinion from the computer and it will become mandatory,” Shetty said.