A decade-long study of 38,000 elderly patients across South India has found that only 16% had health insurance for cataract surgery. The lack of coverage worsens visual outcomes and financial security, highlighting the urgent need for improved insurance access for India’s aging population.
Published Date – 28 July 2025, 04:10 PM
Dr Brijesh Takkar
Hyderabad: A new study involving 10 years of data from nearly 40,000 patients from multiple health care centers including Hyderabad, has indicated that a large proportion of India’s elderly population undergoing cataract surgery lacks adequate health insurance, leading to poorer visual outcomes and greater financial vulnerability.
Published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia and Science Director Elsevier (July/August, 2025), the research highlights a big decline in insurance uptake with increasing age, particularly among those over 80 years, despite recent government health insurance coverage, a press release said.
The study is a multicentre retrospective cohort analysis of 38,387 patients who were over 70 years old, and underwent cataract surgery, which is the most common eye surgery and a proxy for eye health access, in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Karnataka.
The study found that only 16.07 percent had any form of insurance coverage. This limited coverage also declined with advancing age, from 17.5 percent among the 70 years to 74-year-old cohorts to less than 10 percent for those aged over 85 years, and 7.14 percent for those over 90.
“We found that insurance uptake is uniformly low across India’s elderly population, and the coverage declined dramatically in patients over 80 years of age. We noted that lacking insurance was associated with poorer visual outcomes following cataract surgery, as the insurance uptake may impact the quality of eye care received,” says Dr. Raja Narayanan, one of authors of the study.
The research provides evidence that adequate insurance coverage improves the chances of receiving timely health care while also benefiting from superior outcomes. I would argue that these findings are true not just for cataract surgery, but for all forms of health intervention,” notes Dr Brijesh Takkar, ophthalmologist at Hyderabad-based L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) and the first author of this study.
