India will offer incentives to private hospitals to take part in the government’s health insurance program, potentially the biggest of its kind in the world, a senior government official told Reuters. Launched last year, the scheme is critical to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plans to reform the country’s health system, where private healthcare is too expensive for most people and public hospitals are overburdened and often dilapidated. India has so far registered about 20% of the eligible 500 million people, due to lack of public awareness of the scheme and low private sector participation, said Indu Bhushan, CEO of the National Health Authority (NHA), which runs the program.
