With insurance firms saying they will no longer allow cashless transactions in some of the country’s leading hospitals, the patients have nowhere to go. This is breach of contract since the TPA booklets given to those buying insurance very clearly mention that these hospitals are covered under the cashless facility.
It is not enough for the insurance companies to just withdraw the cashless facility from these hospitals. If they are making the charge of overbilling, it is incumbent upon them to prove it. These companies have not even come up with one such case; they have not taken even one of these hospitals to court and they have just declared them guilty. This is not how you expect public sector companies to behave. What is all the more shocking is that the insurance regulator is not even looking into the plight of the common man who does not have lakhs of spare cash to simply pay a hospital bill and then wait for months for it to be reimbursed. When the insurance firms were affected by the Sebi ban on Ulips, the regulator was quick to jump into the ring on their behalf.
Sanjiv Dubey, New Delhi
