-The Times of India BENGALURU: Insurance regulator IRDAI on Friday came out with new rules that will have widespread ramifications for health insurers and the general public. Insurers henceforth cannot decline coverage to those who have used opioids or anti-depressants. Nor can they exclude those with a history of clinical depression, personality disorders, sociopathy, psychopathy, or neurodegenerative disorders. They cannot exclude kids suffering from development disorders such as Down’s syndrome, cerebral...

-The Telegraph In addition to problems like malnutrition, adivasi communities face newer burdens such as hypertension and heart ailments Pretending that a problem does not exist will not make it go away; it will only complicate the matter further. This is evident from the findings of a new report on tribal health, compiled by an expert committee set up by the Union government in 2013, that claims to be the first comprehensive...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Indian Psychiatric Society has launched its first-ever campaign to assert that homosexuality is not an illness amid concerns that sections of the public and physicians continue to mistakenly believe it can be treated. Senior members of the IPS plan to address conferences open to the public and use social media platforms to argue that homosexuality and lesbianism are just variations in sexual orientation and provide science-driven guidance...

-The Indian Express Women form 80 per cent of urban migrants, but public policy is blind to their concerns. A recent UN report says India is on the “brink of an urban revolution”, as its population in towns and cities are expected to reach 600 million by 2031. Fuelled by migration, megacities of India (Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata) will be among the largest urban concentrations in the world. Interestingly, the 2011 Census...

-Scroll.in Thailand spends as much of its GDP on health as India, yet it offers the entire range of healthcare services to all citizens for free. Finance Minister Arun Jailtley’s Budget speech this year and the subsequent media coverage projected insurance coverage as being almost synonymous with universal health coverage. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health insurance is only a small part of ensuring universal health coverage. Besides, to...