K Hari Narayan, chairman, insurance regulatory development authority (IRDA), said, "There is a considerable variation in the cost of procedure from hospital to hospital. Recently, one hospital charged Rs 9.38 lakh for a treatment procedure while another hospital charged Rs 3.38 lakh for the same procedure. With relevant data, the insurance industry would design products for different types of hospital that can be specific. "

"The industry would have more products, which would segregate different section of hospital into sets. So, premium for one set of hospitals would be different the other," he said.

Narayan said for all this to happen, the industry should share data with each other. He said, at present, only the data of people who have made claims is available, which is not adequate. A much wider database would make all the difference.

The IRDA is in the process of establishing a data warehouse that will contain information in detail about health insurance, which can benefit the industry as a whole. In Andhra Pradesh, the data is collected right at village level with a target of 2.5 crore people.

"During the data collection, it was found that the disease burden of diabetes in poor families is less. One reason is that people from lower socio-economic classes have to do more physical work and their diet is not rich which is responsible for inducing lifestyle diseases."