Church gives medical insurance to poor

The rising cost of medical services has spurred a Thane church to provide free medical insurance to its poorest families.

While many churches provide medical aid to poor members, the Our Lady of Mercy church at Pokhran Road has probably become the first in the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay to provide medical insurance to its poor members by paying the premium.

The church earlier used to give Rs5,000 as medical aid to families and in cases of severe illness, around Rs20,000. “But we felt that it was not enough to cover medical expenses. We thought a better way is to insure poor families so that in case of medical emergencies, they can get between Rs1 lakh and Rs2 lakh,” said Father Ralph Fernandes, priest-in-charge of the church.
The insurance project was inaugurated last month and so far 14 families have been covered by the insurance. Another eight or nine families have also been identified for help.

With the help of parish workers called animators, families that earned less than Rs1,20,000 a year were shortlisted for the scheme.

Many other families who had applied for the facility could not get the insurance as the insuring company did not accept their applications because of rules about existing illnesses and higher age of members. The animators will also help the families identity hospitals covered by the insurance scheme.

The premium is paid by the church from contributions received from the community. The parish has around 1,100 families and each family pays 1% of their income to the church as ‘tithe’ — the voluntary contribution accepted in most Christian societies. The church recently paid around Rs90,000 as annual premium for the families.

Most churches in the city provide medical aid to families, but in most cases, the amount is not adequate due to the growing cost of medical services. Attempts to start a medical insurance scheme across the Archdiocese of Bombay, which has over 5 lakh members, have not worked out.

“We have often spoken about such medical insurance at the diocesan level. But it has been difficult to organise,” said Fernandes.

In case of worshipers at Our Lady of Mercy church, the recent death of a 40-year old member convinced them about the need for a scheme that could meet the medical expenses of poorer parishioners in times of emergencies. The deceased, who worked at the church office, had a case of cancer that had relapsed. She needed four sessions of chemotherapy that would have cost her around Rs1 lakh. She could not afford the expensive treatment.

Since she was an employee, she received more medical aid than what is normally provided to member families. But the incident set the path for the acceptance of the idea at the parish. The church’s finance committee approved the scheme.

Community groups said that the idea should be followed by other churches to help the poor. Gordon D’Souza, president of the Bombay Catholic Sabha, the community’s largest lay group said, “It is a wonderful idea considering the steep rise in hospitalisation costs.”