Indians spend 8 times more on private hospitals than on govt. ones
The
National Health Accounts (NHA) Estimates data for the financial year 2013-14 was recently released. The
data was released by the Health Ministry after almost a decade. The NHA
monitors the flow of resources in the country’s health system and provides
details of health finances.
Highlights:
Private
Vs. Public Hospitals:
- Indians spent eight times more on private hospitals and twice as much on transporting patients compared to costs in government hospitals during financial year 2013-14.
- Households spent Rs. 64,628 crore on private hospitals compared to just Rs. 8,193 crore on government hospitals.
- A total of Rs. 18,149 crore was spent on patient transportation services, like use of an ambulance.
- Considering all revenue sources, including government funding, expenditure on private hospitals — Rs. 88,552 crore — was double that on government hospitals — Rs. 41,797 crore.
Healthcare
spending as a percentage of GDP:
- India spent a total of Rs. 4.5 lakh crore on healthcare in 2013-14 at 4% of the GDP, of which Rs. 3.06 lakh crore came from households.
- Public spending is abysmally low, constituting around 29% of the total health expenditure — 1% of GDP.
- There has been a marginal improvement from 2004-05, when the share of government spending was just 22%.
- Preventive care gets just 9.6% of the total money that flows in India’s healthcare system. The current expenditure on preventive care is estimated at Rs 40,627 crore. All the government-funded national health programmes such as the National Disease Control Programmes are covered under this category.
Out-of-pocket
(OOP) expenditure:
- Out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure is the money individuals pay on their own rather than being covered by insurance or health benefits.
- Indians’ out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure on healthcare has been estimated to be around Rs. 2.9 lakh crore or 69% cent of total health expenditure (THE) in the country. This is alarmingly high and India stands among the highest in this metric worldwide.
- The share of OOP as a percentage of Current Health Expenditure (CHE) has however, decreased from 69.4% in 2004-05 to 64.2% in 2013-14. The CHE comprises 93%, the rest 7% going to Capital Expenditure.
- Half of all the household money that is spent on healthcare — around Rs. 1.5 lakh crore — goes to pharmacies. This includes chemists, community and independent pharmacies.
