insurance exclusions

I was surprised when the Supreme Court recently questioned why insurance companies didn’t cover the cost of psychiatric treatment under medical insurance. Didn’t they? I didn’t know that. After the Mental Healthcare Act was enacted in 2017 the IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India) had issued a directive to all insurance companies to do so. But it obviously didn’t happen.

Okay. ‘Mental illness’ is a slippery slope for sure, like euthanasia, living will, Do Not Resuscitate orders, pro-life arguments and punishment of juveniles for heinous crimes. People have different notions of mental illness to begin with.

The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 defines mental illness as follows:

A substantial disorder of thinking, mood, perception, orientation or memory that grossly impairs judgment, behaviour, capacity to recognise reality or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life, mental conditions associated with the abuse of alcohol and drugs.”

All of these are observations that a psychiatrist makes in the course of a patient’s Mental State Examination. His inferences can be construed as subjective and biased by anyone who chooses to do so. For example, if I think a patient is severely depressed and admit him because I think there is a risk of suicide, will the insurance company reimburse him if the suicide doesn’t happen? Will I be suspected of profiteering in some way from the patient’s hospital admission?

Insurance contracts are structured between providers and insurers both of whom benefit from a patient being hospitalised and sent through lab and radiological investigations, procedures or surgery. So ­– between doctors, hospital owners, insurance people and patients – does anyone trust anyone else anymore?

Regarding mental illness, insurance companies list exclusions in their brochures and policy documents, like depression, alcohol-related illnesses, ‘nervous breakdown’ and anxiety, all of which we recognise as symptoms of mental illness needing treatment.

Some are also smug about the fact that since most mental illnesses need only outpatient treatment very few patients can take advantage of the IRDAI directive to cover psychiatric treatment. True. Which means, any directive will look good on paper but won’t benefit patients.

There seems to be no consensus among concerned parties on what constitutes mental illness in spite of the legal definition. Our criteria are often unacceptable to non-psychiatrists, and the way insurance policy documents are worded suggests that insurance agencies think we are out to con them!

If we tell them that Panic Disorder is a mental illness and not a character flaw, that it is not something that afflicts a weak person who can’t face life, they are sure to think it’s a scam.

They are equally likely to think Major Depressive Disorder is sadness caused by ‘overthinking’ about things that don’t concern you, when your job is to work, eat, deal with your social media, watch something on your phone and go to sleep.

What about OCD? They most likely believe that a stubborn person who believes she knows best about cleanliness and perfection doesn’t deserve insurance if she ends up in hospital due to her cleaning mania. She’s clearly got her comeuppance.

People with AIDS, alcohol-induced health problems and reconstructive surgery are not covered by insurance. Looks like insurance people think these people brought it upon themselves and must be punished!

What about grief that eventually turns out to be a patient’s first Major Depressive Episode, precipitated by bereavement and needing hospitalisation?

And anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders? I haven’t found any insurance company that covers Eating Disorders – they probably view rejecting food as entitled behaviour!

Autoimmune disorders are exclusions too! So are behavioural, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders! How come? If anyone needs help, these people need it most because their illnesses are not curable and need lifelong treatment. The word insurance literally means assurance and comes from the French seur, meaning safe, which comes from the Latin securus meaning ‘free from care, secure’. The idea of insurance implies kindness and support – how ironic!

Don’t people who run insurance companies learn these things as part of their training? I’m sure they do, or else how would they be so good at finding loopholes!

There are only two conditions lay people seem to understand as mental illness: one, schizophrenia, only if the patient has florid hallucinations and delusions and is violent; two, the manic phase of Bipolar Disorder where even a casual observer can see that the patient’s behaviour is off-kilter.

No insurance agent seems to know that for every mental illness we see as strange behaviour, there’s something happening in the brain to cause it, just as the illnesses that his company does cover have an underlying malfunction in some organ. The disorder is not in the mind but in the brain, a large organ, just like the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs! As I’ve said before, Psychiatry is Neurology at a cellular/biochemical level.

I can’t imagine being a consultant to IRDAI and giving them advice on providing insurance cover for mental illness. It would be incredibly hard to convince people in the insurance business that a mental illness is as real as fractured bones or a ruptured appendix.

Half the world can’t imagine something they can’t see. They need something tangible like a BP reading or a blood test or a CT scan report, just as the other half of the world wouldn’t know how to hustle and make serious money instead of sticking with a safe job and a fixed salary. It’s just the way different people are wired.

No matter how much we try to increase awareness, the concept of mental illness is hard to convey because there are too many grey areas. For example, is someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder mentally ill? Or is he a morally bankrupt criminal who ought to be in jail? If admitted for surgery following an attack by a rival gang, and APD is diagnosed through his history, and psychiatric treatment is attempted, should the insurance company cover his psychiatric treatment as well? Who decides this?

The Indian Psychiatric Society has much to clarify about mental illness if we are to make things easier for our patients. To whom, I don’t know. The government? The IRDAI? Insurance companies? Why will the latter be interested when they don’t stand to gain?

I guess it’s down to lawyers, insurance people and the government – mainly the government – to come up with guidelines, preferably with input from the Indian Psychiatric Society. The sheer number of suicides in our country should make recognition and treatment of mental disorders a priority without creating so many stumbling blocks in the form of insurance exclusions.