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Health sector budget insufficient, says MP Arora
Ludhiana MP (Rajya Sabha) Sanjeev Arora stressed the need to take care of all the issues related to the health sector of the country.
While participating in a general discussion on Union budget 2024-25 in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Ludhiana MP (Rajya Sabha) Sanjeev Arora stressed the need to take care of all the issues related to the health sector of the country. He pointed out that health sector is an important sector that concerns every individual in the country.
Arora said the only way forward is to increase the budgeted allocation for health sector and make health care affordable for all. He added to begin with he would request finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to increase budget allocation to 2.5% as mentioned in 2017 report of national health policy. He also requested to the Union health minister JP Nadda to use his good offices and get the needful done.
Arora stated that India is ranked on 158th out of 196 countries on government health expenditure, according to the 134th Report of standing committee on health and family welfare of the government. He added global healthcare expenditure in most of the countries is on an average 8% to 12% of GDP, whereas India, which needs the most, is still below 2%. He said it goes up to 17% in USA, but there could be some exceptions. He added he has taken most of the countries in the world which are 8% to 12%.
Further, he said it was the NDA government’s target in 2017 that by 2025, 2.5% will be spent on health GDP. It is mentioned in the national health policy drafted by the NDA government. But in the 2024-25 budget it is less than 2%.
He pointed out that out-of-pocket expense as per government record or government report is around 50%. This is as per the national health accounts estimate. But this is far from the truth for one reason that there is much of expenditure being done in shape of OPD, radiology, and pathology, and purchase of medicines which happens in cash, which is not reported, but the other side is reported in full. So, there is a private report, which says if we consider all these expenditures, out-of-pocket expenditure comes to 60%, which is extremely high.
Adding, he said now, coming to the expenditure in budget. In the financial year 2023-24, budgeted estimate was ₹86,175 crores, whereas revised estimate was ₹77,624 crores, which means it is less than 2% of GDP, and then the amount being spent is still lesser than what is being shown in budget. He said underutilization of funds is not like ₹1,000 or ₹500 crores, it is ₹10,000 crores.
Further, he said, this time, the budgeted estimate for financial year 2024-25 is ₹87,656 crores, which is only 1% increase of the total budget of the total health expenditure from the previous budget. This is not even close to inflation.
