HEALTH SPENDING INDIA

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• Almost half of all health spending in India is still paid by patients themselves directly at the point of treatment, though out-of-pocket expenditure has dropped as the government’s share of spending on health went up significantly after 2013-14, the Economic Survey 2022-23 says.
• The share of government in the total health expenditure was just 28.6% in the financial year 2013-14, but rose to 40.6% by 2018-19, the latest year for which data are available. There was a concomitant decline in out-of-pocket expenditure from 64.2% in 2013-14 to 48.2% in 2018-19.
• Out-of-pocket expenditure is the money paid by households at the point of receiving health care. This occurs when services are neither provided free of cost through a government health facility, nor is the individual covered under any public or private insurance or social protection scheme.

Govt. hikes spending

• For 2018-19, India’s total health expenditure was estimated at ₹5,96,440 crore, which is 3.2% of the GDP and ₹4,470 per capita.
• This includes current and capital expenditures incurred by the government and private sources, including external funds.
• Government health expenditure for that year amounted to 40.6% of the total, while out-of-pocket expenditure remained marginally higher at 48.2%. In States such as Uttar Pradesh, the out-of-pocket estimates were as high as 71.3%.
• It has been recommended several times that government’s health expenditure be raised from the existing 1.2% to 2.5% of the GDP by 2025.
• The Survey states that Central and State governments’ budgeted expenditure on the health sector reached 2.1% of the GDP in the Budget estimates for 2022-23 and 2.2% in the revised estimates for 2021-22, an increase from 1.6% in 2020-21.

Falling short

• Under the Health Ministry’s largest cashless health insurance scheme — the Ayushman Bharat Jan Arogya Yojana — approximately 21.9 crore beneficiaries have been verified, including 3 crore beneficiaries verified using State IT systems.
• This is less than 50% of the targeted approximately 50 crore beneficiaries under the scheme.
• “As of January 4, approximately 4.3 crore hospital admissions, amounting to ₹50,409 crore, have also been authorised under the scheme through a network of over 26,055 hospitals,” the Survey added.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB