The Union Budget 2016-17 announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, though spelt out incremental schemes for improving healthcare coverage and some duty soaps for selected treatment segment, it has again disappointed the sector on the larger schemes such as National Health Mission and universal coverage.
The Budget proposal has mentioned increased allocation of funds for covering serious illnesses through a healthcare protection scheme for low income families, opening of 3000 more Jan Aushadhi stores and National Dialysis Programme along with excise duty waiver for dialysis equipment. While the larger schemes like increased national spend for overall healthcare, larger insurance coverage, infrastructure development and increased access to primary and secondary healthcare were left unattended once again.
The sector had expected increased health budget in proportion to the population and the GDP through the much hyped National Health Mission, more clarity on public-private partnership in the healthcare to increase access and announcement of health insurance scheme to cover larger sizeof the population. Despite the hope built up by the government to give special emphasize to health, none of these proposals were included in the new Budget proposal.
"The increased coverage on health promotion scheme announced in the Budget is welcome but fall short of what would be adequate for coverage for treatment of major illnesses," says Dr. Vivekanand Jha, professor of Nephrology at the PGIMER, Chandigarh and executive director, George Institute for Global Health, India.
We await the details of how this amount is to be spent – whether it is only for coverage of cost of illnesses, or will it be spent on promoting health, or bolstering the primary health sector to keep people healthier and out of hospital. We hope part of this will be spent on using smart methods to improve healthcare delivery using smart technologies and health manpower restructuring, he added.
"It is interesting that the government has announced a National Dialysis Scheme – provision of dialysis has long been a benchmark for the willingness of governments around the world to provide healthcare to its populations. Once again – the devil will be in the details, for it is easy to spend a lot of money on dialysis for a relatively small proportion of the population," says Jha.
The move to provide affordable medicines is long overdue and most welcome, but it needs a system of making sure the drug inventory and use is monitored. Also, disappointing is not to hear a more explicit commitment to develop primary healthcare and developing a robust framework for that. We do hope that the government will announce details for making National Health Mission a priority and increasing spending in this area, the industry stakeholders reacted to the Budget.
"Budget 2016 once again neglects the overall development of the healthcare sector," said Vishal Bali, co-founder and chairman of home care major Medwell Ventures.
"For a sector that has an intense demand supply gap, the finance minister has given it a cursory attention as there is no fundamental change to increase public healthcare spending and give it the necessary boost towards at least 2 per cent of GDP," he added.
The decision to provide health insurance coverage of Rs 1 lac to senior citizens of BPL families is a good move besides the step to launch a National Dialysis services program under PPP structure.
But the Budget is silent on Universal Healthcare coverage agenda which has been often discussed by the government. Healthcare should have been an integral part of the focus that has been given to infrastructure. The NCD epidemic in India has not been given any attention towards increased allocation.
"The announcement of tax holiday for start-ups for three of five years of setting up the company might encourage innovative healthcare firms to set up their business to usher in the much change that is likely to make healthcare sector more technology-driven. Holding fiscal deficit at 3.5 per cent of the GDP is a good but healthcare given the miss as a national agenda," Bali added.
BW Reporters
Unnikrishnan is currently Senior Associate Editor with BW Businessworld at its Mumbai Bureau. During his two decades long journalistic career, he has received several media awards and recognitions. His articles on healthcare, life sciences and intellectual property rights (IPR) have been republished by several international blogs and journals.
