India’s GDP for health is less than 1.5 per cent and is one of the lowest in the world
Health infrastructure, especially in the rural areas, is going to be one of the challenging tasks ahead for the new government. In its last tenure, it brought the Ayushman Bharat scheme — the government run health insurance programme — which was seen as a major health policy intervention. However, according to experts, the scheme was unable to solve the larger crisis in the health sector.
There is an urgent need to invest in building healthcare infrastructure, especially in the periphery, says Joyti Ghosh, a professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) Centre for Economic Studies and Planning. “The much-celebrated insurance scheme has only filled the pockets of the insurance companies but has neither improved health infrastructure nor helped the people,” she added.
Ghosh stressed that the new government must increase its public health spending up to at least three per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Currently, India’s GDP for health is less than 1.5 per cent. With almost all neighbouring countries investing 2-3 per cent of GDP, the country has one of the lowest in the world.
Another area to be looked into is the escalating prices of essential medicines. A Parliamentary standing committee report on drug pricing, submitted in February 2019 noted that the government has actually failed to check the rising cost.
“The government has allowed the firms to set the prices as per market-based system rather that what they accrue as costs of production. However, while pharma firms are making lot of profits, the common man is suffering. The government must without delay ask the firms to go back to cost-of-production pricing system,” Jan Swasthya Abhiyan’s Amitava Guha said.
Ghosh pointed out that the practice of granting secondary patents has added to the cost. The new health minister should completely stop it and make the patents’ office more transparent, she noted.
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