# DataLabs by Plum

> Data journalism on the economics of health conditions in India, built from Plum's de-identified health insurance claims. Published by Plum at https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs.

Plum (plumhq.com) is an India-based employee health benefits and insurance platform. Plum Benefits Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd is an IRDAI-registered direct broker (Life & General), registration no. 897.

Every edition has a Markdown version with the same text, the key findings, a Q&A, the methodology and the data behind each chart as tables. It is faster to read than the HTML. Open the edition the question is about; use the full file only when you need everything.

The figures describe Plum's insured cohorts, not the population of India. Names, contact details and policy numbers are removed before analysis. Corrections and questions: datalabs@plumhq.com

Key findings:

- In Plum's cohort of 9,534 heart-related health insurance claims from 7,402 patients, the total amount claimed was ₹148.34 crore. (https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health)
- In Plum's heart-related claims, the median cost of a hospitalisation ranged from ₹38,000 for a mild episode to ₹4.2 lakh for a critical one, and the median hospital stay from 3 days to 12 days. (https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health)
- In Plum's cost-outlier analysis of 8,941 heart-related claims, 33.5% cost more than twice the median for their condition group (the overall median, for six small groups) and 10.9% cost more than five times that median. (https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health)
- In Plum's cohort of 8,102 cancer-related insurance claims across multiple insurers, which includes carcinoma in situ and benign growths such as fibroids, ₹78.0 crore was claimed in total, insurers paid 70.8% of the amount claimed, and patients' out-of-pocket costs came to ₹23.2 crore. (https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer)
- Of the 2,431 patients in Plum's cancer treatment-intensity analysis, 20.2% (about 1 in 5) had total claimed treatment costs above ₹5 lakh, the edition's figure for a typical annual sum insured, while 39.7% stayed within ₹1.25 lakh. (https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer)
- In Plum's cancer claims data, the median total amount claimed per patient, before insurance payouts, was ₹7.6 lakh at Treatment Intensity Level III (157 patients) and ₹13.4 lakh at Level IV (14 patients), which the edition equates to 7.6 and 13.4 years of savings for a household that saves ₹1,00,000 a year. (https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer)

## Editions

- [Investigating Heart Disease: The burden, costs, and early risk](https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health.md): Heart disease in Plum's health insurance claims in India: 9,534 heart-related claims from 7,402 patients, analysed by condition, age, severity and cost. Web page: https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/heart-health (Markdown ~52k characters)
- [The Cost of Cancer: Financial Impact of Cancer Claims](https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer.md): What cancer treatment costs and how much insurance pays: Plum's analysis of 8,102 cancer-related claims across multiple insurers, by cancer type, age and cost. Web page: https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/cancer (Markdown ~33k characters)

## Related on plumhq.com

- [The Standard of Employee Benefits 2026-27](https://www.plumhq.com/standard-of-employee-benefits): Plum's annual benchmark of employee health benefits in India.
- [Plum](https://www.plumhq.com/llms.txt): employee health insurance and benefits for companies in India; the site map for AI assistants.

## Optional

- [Every edition in one file](https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/llms-full.txt): all Markdown editions concatenated.
- [DataLabs overview](https://www.plumhq.com/datalabs/index.md): the home page in Markdown.