New Delhi, April 26
People’s out of pocket expenditure on health has reduced substantially by nearly 16 percentage points between 2014 and 2020, the latest edition of National Health Accounts Estimates released today reveal.
Parallel to this, public (central and state go expenditure) spending on health has risen by 12 percentage points over the same period.
National Health Estimates 2019-2020, the seventh edition of national spend data on health, indicate that the nation is on course to achieving universal health coverage, Member Health NITI Aayog VK Paul said.
Paul said the country was making significant progress towards the national goal of raising public spending on health to 2.5 pc of the GDP.
The latest estimates show that public expenditure on health has gone up from 1.13 pc of the GDP in 2014-15 to 1.35 pc in 2019-2020.
In the last edition of the estimates 2018-19, the public spending as a percentage of GDP was found at 1.28 pc.
Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan said the latest estimates had four major takeaways.
“First, out of pocket expenditure on health has registered a significant decline. Out of pocket expenditure has declined by 16 pc points from 2014-15 to 2019-20. It was 62.6 pc of the total health spending in 2014-15 and is down to 47 pc now,” said Bhushan noting that people were now spending less out of pocket on health because the government spending on health had increased by 12 pc points from 29 pc of the total health expenditure in 2014 to 41.4 pc in 2020.
“Free medicine, free tests, screening at primary health level is helping. At the secondary and tertiary level there’s PMJAY with annual hospitalisation cover for the poor and vulnerable,” Bhushan said.
The estimates show that government was now spending Rs 2,014 per capita on health as against Rs 1,108 in 2014.
Further, the majority of government expenditure is in primary health care now.
“As much as 55.9 pc of government health spending is in primary sector, up from 51 pc in 2014,” the accounts reveal.
Fourthly, social security expenditure in health insurance and other products has risen from 5.7 pc in 2014 to 9.3 pc now, signalling a trend that those with purchasing power are buying insurance and supplementing government spend on health.
Among challenges Paul cited the wide gap state governments have to fill when matching health grants and budgets.
“The states are required to allocate 8 pc of their budget for health but only two states are doing that and the average for the rest is just 4.5 pc,” he said.
Asked about challenges, Bhushan said a major challenge was to sustain spending in primary health care through preventive and promotive health care which in turn would reduce the burden of expenditure on secondary and tertiary facilities like AIIMS.
