-Scroll.in Thailand spends as much of its GDP on health as India, yet it offers the entire range of healthcare services to all citizens for free. Finance Minister Arun Jailtley’s Budget speech this year and the subsequent media coverage projected insurance coverage as being almost synonymous with universal health coverage. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health insurance is only a small part of ensuring universal health coverage. Besides, to...
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Another Budget, Another Year of Ignoring Binding Laws on Rights -Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy
-TheWire.in The making of the Union Budget has been a far too secretive and hidden exercise. Social sector expenditure and allocations related to policy announcements should be matters of open ongoing debate. On December 20, 2017, a group of 60 eminent economists sent an open letter to the finance minister stating: “We are writing to draw your attention to two urgent priorities for the forthcoming budget.” The first was to increase the central...
More »What the US Health Insurance Programme Can Teach India -Rama V Baru
-TheWire.in Why has India chosen the path of expanding medical insurance instead of a more comprehensive approach to health? The concern with rising inequities in access to medical care, rising out-of-pocket expenditures and unmet treatment needs have been addressed with yet another targeted medical insurance scheme for poor households. The idea of a targeted medical insurance is not new. Several southern states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka had introduced such schemes many...
More »Union Budget 2018: Poor diagnosis, wrong medicine -Sourindra Mohan Ghosh & Imrana Qadeer
-The Indian Express The focus in the Union Budget on tertiary healthcare at the cost of primary and secondary healthcare is flawed. A publicly-financed health insurance scheme is no substitute If the past three Union budgets were any indication, this budget’s approach to the health sector should not have surprised anyone. The prescription in the National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 to increase the government’s (Centre and the states together) health expenditure from the...
More »Why the Poor Will Not Be the True Beneficiaries of the 'World's Largest Health Programme' -Dipa Sinha
-TheWire.in While the government claims it “will bring healthcare system closer to the homes of people,” it hopes to do this through the private sector, not by strengthening the public health system. Health is being hailed as the biggest winner of Budget 2018, but a cursory look at the numbers shows that there is nothing to celebrate as far as the health budget is concerned. In fact, the Budget this year once...
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