Jan 06 2015 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

A Good Beginning On Health Policy





The new draft policy covers useful ground

The government has done a good job with the proposed update to the National Health Policy of 2002 vintage. It presses most of the right buttons, has the right priorities, covers a vast ground from the change in the nature of the nation's disease burden (from communicable disease to a preponderance of non-communicable disease) through shortage of human resources in the sector to use of information and communication technology . It seeks to guarantee health for all as an entitlement. This is brave, considering this is very much the approach of the previous UPA government, which the present one has been seeking to badmouth in general. It seeks to increase public expenditure on health to at least 2.5% of GDP, taking note that India ranks low on this score among the major nations of the world. It targets 40% of this expenditure for the Centre, which is quite substantial but has to be prioritised for research, manpower development, regulation and bulk purchases of expensive drugs from multinationals to bring prices down.The draft policy could gain from extending its focus to two areas. One is aligning incentives between insurance and private healthcare provision. Right now, hospitals seek to maximise their take, inflating expenditure, particularly on investigations and avoidable surgery . Insurance seeks to minimise the tab it picks up, leaving the patient in a bad place. If the actuarial exercise of determining the likely cost of keeping a person healthy and treating him in case he falls ill can be performed by the healthcare provider, who then charges the insurance buyer this amount directly , it would obviate a layer of insurance company costs and profit and align incentives better. This system of what is increasingly called Accountable Care needs greater policy attention.
Another area of concern is threats arising from globalisation. People and goods cross borders extensively , bringing in disease that would have been localised in the past. Emergency response systems to epidemic outbreaks must figure in the health policy as well.