Health insurance portability likely to be delayed

 There are indications that the much-awaited health insurance portability will be delayed beyond July 1 when the new system is supposed to be implemented by the general insurers.

The delay in launching the scheme may happen as the insurers are yet to put in place the required system.

The Insurance Regulatory & Development Authority (Irda) has called a meeting of all general insurers on June 24 to take stock of the preparedness of the insurers to unveil the new scheme.

J Hari Narayan, chairman, Irda, said, “We have called a meeting of the chiefs of non-life insurance companies on June 24 to discuss the modalities of the implementation of the health insurance portability. After the meeting, if I am confident that they are ready to go for it, then only I will issue a final notification to kick off the new scheme on July 1.”

M Ramadoss, CMD, New India Assurance said the insurers are likely to discuss some operational issues during the forthcoming meeting. Once we know how to address the issue, we are ready to kick it off on July 1.

A senior official of a another state-owned non-life insurance company admitted that without proper control system in place, the new system will create chaos.

“This has to be system driven. Each of the insurance company’s system should be able to access the system of its peer so as to know the details like medical and claim history of the policyholders,’’ he said.

Health insurance is not a profitable and general insurers on are already incurring losses in this segments and launching the new system will them a further jolt in case there is no proper system in place.

Gaurav Garg, MD & CEO, Tata AIG General Insurance said , the portability scheme is good for the consumers, but finer points need to be addressed.

Some of those issues may include standardisation of a product, sharing losses among the insurers.