In the fifth show of CNBC-TV18’s series ‘Change India’ there are 10 policy initiatives that will enable the next Prime Minister to transform India’s sick healthcare sector. These have been culled from recommendations made by a group of experts including Anjali Nayyar, senior vice president, Global Health Strategies, Ashwini Kumar Setya, senior consultant gastroenterology, Max Healthcare, Parth Shah, president, Centre for Civil Society, Rama Baru, professor, Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU and Dhiraj Nayyar, CEO, Think India Foundation.
The show which was hosted by Raghav Bahl, founder and MD, Network 18. It will present its suggestions on health and 13 other policy areas to the next Prime Minister who takes office in June.Also Read: Revenue of healthcare players to grow 10-15% in FY15
Q: Firstly, double government expenditure on health from 2 percent to 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in five years. Secondly, you must incentivise the better performing states and therefore, the transfer of resources to the states must be linked to their achievement and fulfillment of targets. How achievable are these and if yes, how should the PM go about achieving them?
Baru: The first point that you made is absolutely essential because during the last round of discussions even in the planning commission, they were constantly saying that we don't have enough resources to invest in health and so, I hope that the next PM will have health on the top of the agendas and will double as per the recommendations that the first point makes.
As far as second point is concerned, my only concern is that the poor performing states are also the financially weaker states and while the increased performance should get better transfer of funds, we would also have to look at how we balance this and how we support states that are not financially in a position to invest in health services.
The status of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) would also have to be reviewed and I hope that whichever political party comes to power, would not dismantle the efforts of the NRHM program and would actually be fitter.
Q: One of the recommendations that we made taking into account the financial weakness of states is that the transfer should be linked to delta, it should not be linked to the absolute level but the rate of change at which states are able to enforce some of these recommendations. We have also suggested that there should be lot of public private participation. Government should also be financing healthcare not just giving land and some other resources. Is that something which will augment the resources?
Nayyar: Yes, it will and just to add to what Rama Baru was saying that the 12th plan actually talks about increasing these resources right up to 2.5 percent and I feel that is not going to be enough. We have to look at much more and there are several examples where public private partnerships have benefited and there are real case histories or models or good experiences that we can go by. But the private sector cannot be seen as default that if something doesn’t work, give it to private sector. We have to see how we can strengthen public sector and at the same time have those services that the public sector cannot for some reason perform or to lessen the burden on the public sector, we can outsource to the private sector.
Q: The other point is national health insurance scheme, how can that be made much stronger than what we have been able to do?
Nayyar: A lot really depends on how that insurance scheme is implemented in separate states. There is some concern, I think medical insurance is really beneficial. All of us in the middle, upper middle-class have medical insurance and for the poor class, it will be really beneficial.
Couple of concerns that have come up, will that lead into really corrupting the system to the extent that people will be given unnecessary medical procedures not knowing so that they can avail of the money. One will have to put in a system where it has to be monitored and you will have to do pilot and see how it goes.
For the entire show watch video
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