-Frontline Kerala is facing a situation where health care costs are leading more and more people, not just low-income families, to financial distress. KERALA is once again drawing attention to itself, this time for a persistent trend of a large number of households being pushed into financial ruin because of the expenses incurred for medical care. Several studies have now found evidence for the many facets of this worrying development in a...
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Putting the ‘universal’ in healthcare -Lant Pritchett & Gulzar Natarajan
-The Indian Express Universal health coverage (UHC) is at the heart of the government's healthcare agenda. The 12th Five Year Plan targets a long-term goal of UHC where "each individual would have assured access to a defined essential range of medicines and treatment at an affordable price, which would be entirely free for a large percentage of the population". But this year's reduced budgetary allocation raises troublesome questions about its ability...
More »Budget 2015: Centre’s cash-spread to states lavish only on paper
-The Times of India PM Narendra Modi in his speech in Parliament on Friday underlined how his government had decided to transfer a much larger share of resources to the states in line with Finance Commission recommendations, though it didn't have to. The finance minister in his budget speech repeatedly referred to the issue and the reduced "fiscal space" he had. The budget numbers reveal, however, that the states won't really...
More »The budget exposes the class bias of the Modi govt -Prasenjit Bose
-Hindustan Times Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's claims of already having achieved an economic turnaround, made in his budget speech, evoke suspicion. Inflation is certainly down and so is the current account deficit, but that has almost entirely to do with the crash in international crude oil prices, which have fallen from $110 per barrel in June 2014 to around $57 per barrel currently. In fact, rather than passing on the full...
More »Social spending cut first time in a decade
-Hindustan Times The government slashed plan expenditure by about 20% in the 2015-16 budget amid fiscal concerns, hitting spending on social sectors such as education and women's empowerment that were the focus areas of the previous UPA administration. In the 2014-15 budget, Arun Jaitley allocated Rs. 5,75,000 crore for plan expenditure, or money that goes towards creation of productive assets, but could spare only Rs. 4,65,277 crore this time. This is also...
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