Under-reporting policy claims may be behind rising health inflation

IIB has analysed how prices of health insurance claims have risen over a seven-year period, since 2010

There could be an explanation for the massive spike in the health inflation rate in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) that has surprised analysts. The reason could be under-reporting of the insurance claims data, suggests an insurance industry statistical report. 

The monthly figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for the CPI health in December 2018 had shown a 9.02 per cent rise on year-on-year (YoY) basis. However, there has not been a sharp rise in price of medicines or that of insurance rates. This had emasculated the dip in the overall CPI to 2.19 per cent in December,