I was invited to participate in an interesting panel discussion by Dr Prakash, the Medical Director of Star Health, India’s leading stand-alone health insurer. Health insurance in India has taken great strides in recent years, but there is a sense of tension between healthcare providers (doctors and hospitals) on the one hand, and payers (health insurers) on the other. Insurers worry about the issue of moral hazard, and they believe that doctors overcharge patients just because they are insured, and hospitals pad their bill, because the patient is not paying for it out of her pocket, and it’s the insurer who is picking up the tab.
Hospitals, on the other hand, feel that insurers (and their agents, the TPAs or third party administrators) use underhand techniques to delay the payments they owe the hospitals for the medical treatment they have provided to their customers. They will not…
