Health Of The Nation

Ayushman Bharat, the flagship scheme of the government of India completes two years since its launch on this day in 2018. The scheme aimed at meeting the objectives of universal health coverage (UHC) in India is designed based on the recommendations of the National Health Policy 2017. The scheme, which aims for a comprehensive health care delivery has two major components; Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) and Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY). While HWCs aim to cater to a severe shortage of primary care centres, the PM-JAY assures a health coverage of up to rupees five lakhs to the bottom 40 per cent of country's population (approximately 10.74 crore households or little over 50 crore people). PMJAY is the largest health assurance scheme globally. It provides a cashless cover for treatment of approximately 1300 predetermined health conditions to the eligible population. Prior to the launch of PMJAY, the health assurance schemes were rather small as each state aimed to pro

The Constitution of India states that it is the “ duty of the State to raise the level of nutrition and standard of living and to improve public health ” (Government of India, 1950) . However, for the past decade, the public health expenditure in India continues to hover around one per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (MoHFW, 2019) . According to the World Bank, India is a Lower Middle-Income country, but its spending on healthcare is even less than the countries in the Lower Income Group. Since government financing is a function of the taxes that it raises, countries with a higher tax to GDP ratio tends to have better-financed healthcare systems. Low and middle-income countries with not so robust tax to GDP ratio finds it difficult to meet the demand for financing the healthcare of its citizens completely. With a tax to GDP ratio falling to a decade low of 9.88 per cent in FY20 (Seth, 2020) , naturally, public financing in India is insufficient to meet the healthcare require