INDIA'S HEALTH - REALITY CHECK

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Indian Health care sector is estimated to grow to around $ 280 billion by 2020, according to data sourced from FICCI. However, a large number of Indians do not have access to quality affordable health care, especially in rural area.
Statistics information on Indian health care shows that 39 million Indian fall below the poverty line each year because of healthcare expenses;
47% of rural Indians and 31% of urban Indians finance their healthcare needs by loans or sale of assets;
30% in rural India don't visit hospitals because of high medical expenses and
70% of Indian spend all their income on healthcare and buying drugs.

So how the poor people will get the healthcare cover ? What is the government's response to this query? The Govt. announced a scheme and pushed the ball .

Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) is the scheme for healthcare to poor people and this scheme is gradually demonstrating that there can be a business model for a social sector scheme. At present, under (RSBY), the premium for health insurance cover of Rs.30000/- for a family of five is shared by the Central and State governments. The beneficiary pays only Rs.30/- as registration fee. In patient healthcare is provided by more than 8000 hospitals. The RSBY covers 26 million families, providing health insurance to around 100 million poor people.
This scheme shows why technology and markets should be used to bring transparency and efficiency in delivering public services.

Finally, market as such may not work for the poor but market mechanisms can be used to bring about efficiency delivery of services to the poor

Soruce: The Economic Times dt. 03.02.2012 p.no: 13

V.SENTHILNATHAN