Written By: Simran Kaur Vij

Simran Kaur Vij

Health and Term Insurance

Simran is an insurance expert with more than 4 years of experience in the industry. An expert with previous experience in BFSI, Ed-tech, and insurance, she proactively helps her readers stay on par with all the latest Insurance industry developments.

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Reviewed By: Anchita Bhattacharyya

Anchita Bhattacharyya

Health, Term & Life Insurance

Anchita has over 6 years of experience in content marketing, insurance, and healthcare sectors. Her motto to make health and term insurance simple for our readers has proven to make insurance lingos simple and easy to understand by our readers.

Updated on Jun 16, 2025 5 min read

Health Insurance Premium In India: An Introduction

Health insurance premiums contribute largely to maintaining your healthcare expenses. However, over the years, due to numerous factors, there has been a consistent increase in health insurance premiums. As per the IRDAI annual reports, premiums have shown an upward trend. Health insurers saw a rise in collected premiums, reaching INR 2,93,612.04 in FY 2023-24, compared to INR 2,60,327.82 in the previous fiscal year. ICICI Lombard, Bajaj Allianz, HDFC Ergo, and Star Health stood to be the highest premium collectors among private health insurers.

Explore more about medical inflation, the highest health insurance premiums, how to protect yourself from the rising premiums, and factors affecting insurance premiums.

traordinary Facts

A recent survey conducted by LocalCircles stated that 52% of policyholders experienced an increase in premiums by over 25% in the last 12 months. As per 21% of the policy owners, their premiums increased by 50% or more. Major contributing factors to increased premiums include medical inflation, increased risk factors due to poor lifestyle, and others.

Health Insurance Premiums Over The Years

Take a look at the health insurance premiums collected by health insurers in India over the years:

What Is Medical Inflation?

Medical inflation refers to the increase in the cost of healthcare services and products over time. This includes a wide range of expenses such as OPD expenses, pre- and post-hospitalisation expenses, medicine expenses, and others. India has been witnessing an alarming rate of medical inflation. As per the latest reports, India has a medical inflation rate of 14%, the highest in Asia.

Why Health Insurance Providers Are Increasing Premiums?

Primarily, health insurance premiums are increasing due to medical inflation. Let us understand the impact of inflation and increasing health insurance premiums.

1. Degrading Lifestyle Is Directly Proportional To Increasing Health Ailments

   With a decline in lifestyle, long working hours, and unhealthy eating habits, lifestyle illnesses are on the rise. India has become a diabetic capital, along with an increase in heart attacks and cancer cases. A large population of unhealthy people leads to increased pressure on the medical infrastructure and health insurers (in claim settlements), due to which health insurance premiums are rising each year.

2. Rising Chronic Diseases

   Chronic diseases are lengthy health problems that affect your health and ability to do regular activities for more than a year. Examples include heart problems, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, arthritis, etc. An unhealthy population leads to multiple complications in the next generation, which in turn increases the prevalence of chronic diseases. The management and care of chronic illnesses like Autism and other complications in children lead to higher cumulative healthcare costs, increasing health insurance premiums.

3. Higher Deductibles and Co-pay Options

   To distribute the impact of medical inflation, health insurers offer health plans with higher co-pays and deductibles. While this strategy reduces the overall premium, it results in increased out-of-pocket expenses for policyholders when they access healthcare.

4. Increasing Additional Medical Care Costs

   Medicines, doctor consultations, preventive healthcare, and surgery are all associated with health insurance. To provide a wider coverage to policyholders’ health insurance premiums are consistently rising.

5. Rising Labour Cost

   The need for skilled healthcare professionals to manage a population of 140 crores requires higher wages, which is a contributory factor to higher health insurance premiums.

How To Minimise The Impact Of Increased Insurance Premiums?

To tackle rising health insurance premiums costs follow these simple hacks from the Pandora’s box of PolicyX.com Insurance Xperts!

Conclusion

In conclusion, health insurance premiums are consistently rising each year, with medical inflation being the leading factor. However, it is tough to pinpoint one particular health insurance provider with the highest health insurance premiums. Rising healthcare costs, health conditions, pre-existing diseases, location, and other factors also play an important role in the rise of health insurance premiums.

To know more about health insurance-related information, follow PolicyX on all social media platforms.

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