A recent article published by the New York Times reported on a massive overhaul to public health care in India. While the country does have free health clinics, these government-run hospitals suffer from very poor quality, corruption, and long wait times. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has focused much of his policy on addressing the concerns of the poorer members of Indian society. The new health care proposal would offer 100 million families up to 500,000 rupees (about $7,860) of coverage per year. This amount is enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries within India. According to India's finance minister, this plan would be the largest government-funded health care program in the world, in terms of number of people covered. In a country of about 1.3 billion people, this new health plan could cover a little under half of the population. In 2014, India spent 1.4% of its GDP on health care, compared to China's 3.1% and the U.S.'s 8.3%.
The new plan does have some critics, however. Several public health care experts have pointed out that it does little to prevent the underlying causes of disease in the first place, such as water and air pollution, malnutrition, poor sanitation, and lack of proper housing. The increased amount of pollution is due in part to the government's strong pro-business policies. It is still unclear how exactly the government plans to pay for the new program, but they are also planning on enacting a tax on capital gains due to India's rising stock market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/business/india-modi-health-care.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld
4 comments:
This is very exciting however, I am curious how they plan to fund such an immense amount of health care especially compared to the past. Additionally, I think it would be more cost effective in the long-run to focus on preventative measures of underlying causes of health problems. Without focusing on the cause they will just have to continue increasing health care funding as more problems related to health arise due to poor living conditions.
You bring up a good point about addressing the causes of the health problems in the first place. I think the issue is that people want free health care because it is a more immediate solution, as fixing problems such as pollution and malnutrition take a longer amount of time. But I believe you may be right about the cost-effectiveness of this new health plan.
I agree with both of you, especially with the necessity of preventative measures, but I think it's interesting to support the argument with the percentages of GDP spent on healthcare. The US healthcare system is built to support retroactive care more than preventative care, and its percentage of GDP spent is 8.3%. In comparison, I looked up the statistic, in France (whose national health care system emphasizes preventative care like yearly check ups and free routine testing), 10.9% of GDP was spent on healthcare. I think that in a country as big as India, with so many impoverished people for whom even basic retroactive healthcare could make a huge difference, the government is going to have to be prepared to spend upwards of 8-10% of GDP on the program. I don't think it's going to make much of a difference in cost whether the government funds health care programs or preventative measures such as improving housing. Whichever side the government chooses to support, privet or non-profit agencies will spend their time and money on the opposite side. In this situation, I think as long as the government does *something*, it will create a good outcome for the poorest people in India.
I totally agree that the bigger issue here is how the Government is going to fund this. The fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP is under control but this is going to spike it severely unless the Government has other plans for raising funds.
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