New Delhi/Chandigarh, July 24, 2024 (Yes Punjab News)
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora, on Wednesday, in his response to the budget in parliament raised very important issues related to the health sector of our country.
Punjab MP in his speech said that Global Health Care expenditure in most of the countries is 8-12% of GDP whereas we in India are still below 2%. He said that we rank 158th in the world which tells a lot.
He added that it was the Govt’s target in 2017 for 2.5% of GDP for health care expenditure by 2025 as per National Health Policy drafted by the NDA Government. But even after so many years we are still below 2%.
He also raised the issue of Out of Pocket Health Expenditure, which is 48% as per National Health Accounts estimate. It is far from accurate as in these figures the cash spent on health care like OPD, radiology, pathology & purchase of medicines is not accounted for.
If these are accounted for the figures will be somewhere around 60%. States like UP crosses 70% as per Govt record. Whereas the world average is around 17%. An Indian is spending more than 3 times the Global Average out of their pockets.
He further added that in 2023-24 budget estimate was 86,175 Crores and revised is 77,624 Crore. It should be on the higher side not toward the lower. This time the budget estimation for health is 87,656 Crores which is only around 1% increase, which is much lower than the inflation.
MP Sanjeev Arora suggested that to take care of all the issues the only way forward is to increase the Budgeted Allocation for Health Sector & make health care affordable for all.
He requested the Finance Minister to increase Budget Allocation to 2.5 % as mentioned in the 2017 report of National Health Policy. He also requested the Health Minister JP Nadda to improve the health sector and bring the needful changes soon.
