A Sociological Study on Attitude and Perception of Young Adult of Bengal regarding Family Health and Social Insurances

Dr. Soumita Dutta

Abstract: Emergencies of all types are by nature unpredictable and sudden in origin. Given these, they have the tendency to render their victims vulnerable, given their concomitant financial shocks. In instances where these persons are not prepared financially particularly for the emergencies, they suffer double agony. Along with national insurances in India, West Bengal in particular has WBHS scheme ie. a state-level health insurance welfare scheme. This scheme had begun in 2008 but 2014 saw a revamp and came to be known as the West Bengal Health for All Employees and Pensioners Cashless Medical Treatment Scheme. Swasthya Sathi was launched on 30th December 2016 and basic health cover for secondary/ tertiary care up to Rs. 5 lakh per annum per family were declared by government. These social insurances are government or institution runed systems to shoulder collective responsibility and provide mass benefit. Since young adults are mainly dependent on parents for insurance or security henceforth vulnerable to emergencies and disasters. Any kind eg. government or private of their insurance may it be health or security has to be borne by family. Cushioning individuals, families and communities against the financial burden of catastrophes and periods of incapacity and old age, is what insurance schemes seek to do. The present study aims to understand the attitude of young adults towards these schemes and policies. With the help of a self-prepared questionnaire data was collected from 60 respondents. The findings reveal that there is a positive attitude among young adults with respect to insurance and mediclaim the awareness and knowledge level is also positive. A variety of responses were obtained in the reasons for choosing certain policies over others where maximum respondents believed security and coverage is most important. Among the respondents who do not have policies, saving and investment attitude is a positive alternative. Those individuals prefer investing their saved sum in other sources rather than policies. Therefore, the growing awareness and popularity of these schemes and policies have been successful in attracting many clients because return value is often more then sum investment along with psychological/ emotional support. This paper would try to learn about attitude, perception of individuals towards theses insurances. How far theses insurances have implication in social milieu or how far it indicates a shift from Collective Care to Institutionalised Risk Management would also be studied.

Keywords: Health Insurance, Medical Health Insurance, Social Insurances, Collective Care, Institutionalised Risk Management