Health Insurance Access and Disease Profile for Women in India

• What is the core message conveyed in your paper?

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are rapidly rising among women in India, especially cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. This emerging health challenge raises questions about health access for women. Public-funded health insurance programs are growing, and enrolment in the national health insurance scheme is rising fast. However, there are several barriers impeding access to healthcare for women, both within households and in the interaction with the health system. This paper draws attention to women’s health needs and the changing burden of disease that varies sharply across Indian states, and points to the challenges and opportunities in enabling access to health for women, including key policy questions that researchers engaged in this field must ask.

• What presents the biggest opportunity?

Public-funded health insurance schemes, including the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), represent an important opportunity to enable affordable health services. However, there is a limited understanding of social, economic and technological barriers in access to these schemes, as well as the challenges faced in the interactions with health services. There is a need for gendered analysis across Indian states to identify regional and context-specific interventions to enable health access for women.

• What is the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge has been non-recognition of women’s empowerment within the domain of NCDs and its role in enabling access to insurance as well as the use of health services. It is important to unpack the role of women’s empowerment, through their agency in seeking healthcare and the social norms that dictate their choices within families and the health system. Further, a lack of empowerment on the economic and digital fronts can restrict the agency of women to seek the healthcare services they need.