Friday 4 October 2013

Someone's Pain & Someone's Gain

As the third day closes on, the stand off between the democrats & republicans continues over what is termed as the biggest US healthcare reform aka Obamacare.

Whilst the controversy continues, India will benefit from this extensive overhaul in the US health insurance sector which intends to include an additional 30mn Americans to sign up for mandatory health insurance.

This single largest reform in the history of US would ultimately boost our Indian economy especially the pharma industry which produces nearly 40% of the generic drugs used in the US.

Apart from the pharma industry the IT & BPM service industry will benefit greatly from the impending reform. Some key facts- the healthcare payer market is estimated to reach ~$18bn with the strongest growth reflecting in the business process outsourcing market which will reach ~2bn.

The US dept. of health & human services estimates that call centers will receive anywhere between 40-45 mn calls this year alone, related to the federal marketplaces. An additional of 3500 letters, emails, and web chat requests is forecasted on a daily basis.

Clearly when such a massive demand for information & services for better health insurance providers arises, India needs to perk up and anticipate that a majority of those calls will be diverted to our BPM industry.

The Indian economy definitely stands to gain from this enormous revamp. Since it implies that more dollars will be spent by the US govt. on healthcare, thereby more dollars will flow into our market- albeit not withstanding the current deadlock.