Economic Survey 2019 depicts encouraging trend in Indian healthcare scenario

NEW DELHI: The out of pocket expenditure (OOPE) on health is declining with government initiatives like Ayushman Bharat and free drugs & diagnostics, the Economic Survey 2019 shows depicting an encouraging trend in Indian healthcare scenario. However, it also cautions that despite the reduction, the out of pocket spend on health remains substantial and still constitutes over 60% of total spend, requiring "policy interventions".
"Though India has made substantial progress, there are areas which require policy interventions to attain the goals of accessible, affordable and quality health care," the survey tabled in the Parliament on Thursday said.
The survey shows that in 10 years the OOPE has reduced from 69.4% in 2004-05 to 60.6% of the total expenditure on health in 2015-16. Whereas, government spending out of total health expenditure improved from 22.5% in 2004-05 to 30.6% in 2015-16.
Medicines constitute a majority of the amount spent out of pocket on health and while the government has taken a slew of steps to control this, the reality is over 60% of the patients are still forced to pay for medicines on their own, the survey says.
To counter the rising health expenditure and high OOPE, health insurance plans need to be simplified to make it easier for individuals to buy them.
The survey says that there is asymmetrical information such as high variability of health care expenditures which often leads people to making health-related decisions which are not in their best interests. These harmful decisions range from not buying health insurance or engaging behaviour such as smoking and drug abuse.
Highlighting the thin health infrastructure and manpower, the survey stressed on an urgent need to ramp up the same.
"Access to health care is still a major challenge in India. If India’s hospital facilities remain at current levels, rising population over the next two decades (even with slowing population growth rates) will sharply reduce the per capita availability of hospital beds in India across all major states," it said."
It added that states where primary health centres are poorly manned have more number of mother and child deaths.
The survey noted a gradual slowing in India's population growtho over few decades, mainly driven by steady decline in India’s total fertility rate since the mid-1980s. Though the decline in India’s TFR has been more gradual when compared to the experience of other emerging economies, it has nonetheless halved from 4.5 in 1984 to 2.3 as of 2016.