The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has asked health insurance companies to offer their products to everyone, regardless of their age. Until now, health insurance was readily available for anyone up to the age of 65, with companies under no obligation to cover those older. But now IRDAI has said insurance firms can extend their health coverage to everyone regardless of their pre-existing medical conditions.

Both these changes are part of a wider set of reforms under the long term goal of “Insurance for All by 2047”, and they have mostly been welcomed as a positive development.

But there is always the fine print, and questions remain about how these measures will pan out in real life. Health coverage tends to get more expensive with age. Will senior citizens be able to afford the packages designed by private insurers? What do the norms say regarding the ‘waiting period’ for pre-existing conditions? And will these measures be enough to reduce out-of-pocket medical expenditure, which is one of the highest in the world in India?

Guest: Professor T Sundararaman, a public health expert, who has served as Executive Director of National Health Systems Resource Centre and as Dean and Professor at the School of Health Systems Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian.