The Budget comes with a minor
increase in allocation to health as compared to last year. It doesn't totally restore the reduction that caused
dismay within the last
budget nor will it replicate the biggest governmental resource pool out
there from the growing value and falling fuel costs. One would have thought that the
more comfortable fiscal space would allow a better priority to health, as
advocated by the Economic Survey.
The initiative on Jan Aushadi
stores is welcome, because it ought
to improve access to low priced, quality
assured generic medicine. Can it replace the antecedently planned free provision of essential medicine in any respect public facilities? Or is that one
thing the states have to be
compelled to pursue on their own?
The proposed scheme to provide
Rs 1 lakh of health insurance cover to each family appears to be an expansion
of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana. Will it also restrict its coverage to
hospitalised care? While useful in reducing some of the financial shocks of
hospitalisation, it will not reduce the high level of expenditure on recurrent
out patient care or chronic drug therapy. More details are needed on how this
scheme will function. The proposal to fund dialysis centres is again welcome,
but limited in impact, if primary care is not efficient in preventing high
blood pressure or diabetes progressing to kidney failure.
The increase tobacco taxes is a
case of ‘willing to strike, but afraid to wound’. Bidis have again been left
out of the tax net, even though they are the most frequently consumed form of
tobacco. The finance minister’s gentle wave is not enough to disperse the dense
cloud of tobacco smoke that envelopes public health today.
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