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E-mailHow Much Does Indian Government Spend on Healthcare? How Much Do We Spend on Healthcare from Our Personal Resources?
The total value of the health sector in India today is annually over Rs.150, 000 crores or US$ 34 billion. This works out to about Rs.1500 per capita which is 6 per cent of GDP. However, of this only 15 per cent is publicly financed, 4 per cent is from social insurance, 1 per cent private insurance and the remaining 80 per cent is spent out of personal resources. (85 per cent of which goes to the private sector).
The tragedy is that in India, as in most other countries, those who have the capacity to buy healthcare from the market may often get this care without having to pay for it directly, and those who are below the poverty line are forced to make direct payments to access healthcare from the market.
National data reveals that half of the people in the poorest 20% of population sold assets or took loans to access hospital care. Hence loans and sale of assets are estimated to contribute substantially to financing healthcare. This makes the need for social security even more imminent.
The health services have been dismally poor and inaccessible for a large majority of the population in India. This is duly acknowledged in “ National Rural Health Mission” document)2005), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, N. Delhi
There are three streams of health providers that have emerged in post independent India- the qualified allopathic doctors, the qualified doctors from the Indian System of Medicine and unqualified health providers – the latter by default have become the mainstay of health services for the bulk of Indian’s population. Thus the health infrastructure need to be strengthened in the country so that the people at large get quality health care.
With less than one percent of the GDP invested in public health provision, India is home to one fifth of the world diseases, where the regular level of malnourished children is higher than that of Sub Saharan Africa and with high rates of anaemia and maternal undernourishment
Health is an indicator of well -being that has direct implications not only for the quality of life but also indirect implications for the production of economic goods and services. “ Health for all by the year 2000” was a national goal set by the Indian Govt in 1978.Since then a lot has been done in improving health both in rural and urban India. Despite all concerted efforts, however, India continues to have high level of morbidity, especially among infants, children, women and elderly. There is also a high incidence of communicable diseases normally associated with low levels of sanitation, public and personal hygiene, poor quality of drinking water and under nutrition.
R.S.Dahiya
RSS 
Within the health sector, failure to implement primary health care policies as
originally conceived has significantly aggravated the global health crisis. These
deficiencies include:
A retreat from the goal of comprehensive national health and drug polices as part of overall social policy.
• A lack of insight into the inter-sectoral nature of health problems and the failure to make health a priority in all sectors of society. A failure to promote participation and genuine involvement of communities
in their own health development.
• Reduced state responsibility at all levels as a consequence of widespread and usually inequitable policies of privatisation of health services.
• A narrow, top-down, technology-oriented view of health and increasingly viewing health care as a commodity rather than as a human right.
• My effort aims to draw public attention to the adverse impact of the policies of iniquitous globalisation on the health of Indian people, especially on the health of the poor.
• It needs to be stated on record that public attention on the passing of the year 2000 without the fulfillment of the ’Health for All by 2000 A.D.’ pledge. This historic commitment needs to be renewed and taken forward, with the slogan ’Health for All - Now!’ and in the form of the campaign to establish the Right to Health and Health Care as basic human rights. Health and equitable development need to be reestablished as priorities in local, national, international policy-making, with Primary Health Care as a major strategy for achieving these priorities.
• In India, globalisation’s thrust for privatisation and retreat of the state with poor regulatory mechanisms has exacerbated the trends to commercialise medical care. Irrational, unethical and exploitative medical practices are flourishing and growing. There is a need to confront such commercialisation, while establishing minimum standards and rational treatment guidelines for health care.
• In the Indian context, top down, bureaucratic, fragmented techno-centric approaches to health care have created considerable wastage of scarce resources and have failed to deliver significant health improvements. In other words it needs to be emphasized that there is urgent need to promote decentralisation of health care and build up integrated, comprehensive and participatory approaches to health care that places ”Peoples Health in Peoples Hands”.
