Budget 2016: What the healthcare needs to cross USD 160 bn mark in 2016

The Indian healthcare sector is poised to hit USD 160 billion mark next year. But the experts say that with some help from the government, even greater milestones will become easier to cross. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley could hold the vaccine that keeps the Indian healthcare sector in the pink of health.The big demand from Budget 2016 is simple: spend more on healthcare. One suggestion to this end is that the government should take a leaf out of the Singapore government's book and create a universal healthcare insurance scheme."Either we have private individuals contributing, like in Singapore or if you have CSR, why don't you have something for healthcare where everyone contributes to it and it will help the government create a fund, so that they can have a universal healthcare insurance scheme?," says Suneeta Reddy, MD, Apollo Hospitals.As demands from the budget go, this is just the beginning.The healthcare sector's demands inlude healthcare cess, CSR activity, tax rebates on preventive diagnosis and medical visas on arrival. Only a year ago, the central government's decision to extend visas-on-arrival to 150 countries seemed to augur well for medical tourism, not just in Chennai but across the country. Fast-forward to 2016, and the basic problem of procedural delays in issuing medical visas has played spoilsport in the industry's attempts to match up to countries like Thailand in the medical tourism space.Budget 2016 should focus on the Prime Minister's Make In India drive when it comes to medical technology. According to market estimates, nearly 80 percent of India's Rs 40,000-crore medical devices sector is import dependent. That will not change unless home-grown R&D activity in this area is encouraged"I was in turkey sometime back. Now if you do any R&D project in turkey, the government gives a rebate between 50 to 80 percent of the R&D spend if it is innovative and in an emerging segment," says Gsk Velu, Chairman & MD, Trivitron Healthcare.

With budget 2016 expected to contain measures that will help Indian business not only weather a rough storm, but take it back to high growth, the healthcare sector is hopeful its demands will not fall on deaf ears.