PLANNING TO LET PEOPLE DIE

The Planning Commission has done it again after its highly controversial and insensitive fixation of the minimum amount needed for subsistence in rural and urban areas. This time it has hit public health. In its draft approach paper for the 12^th Plan, the commission recommends greater role for the private sector in healthcare, India’s healthcare system already is amongst the privatised health care systems in the world. Public expenditure on health in India was just 29.2% of the total spending on health in contrast to the global average of 62.8% according to the World Bank data for 2010.

Government of even developed nations like Canada and Norway bear most of the expenditure on public health. At the same time, abysmally low amount is spent on public health by the Indian State ; that is , just 1.2% of the GDP. Strangely, Planning Commission proposes 1.58% of the GDP towards government spending on health in the 12^th Plan and steadily increasing role for the private sector in health care, which is described as retrograde in an editorial of the New Indian Express. The majority of the Indian population goes to government hospitals for medical care. But nearly 75% of the medicines required for the patients are to be bought from the open market. Consequently, a large number of patients do not get adequate and timely treatment. Medicines in the market, which are often branded, are prohibitively expensive. Thus millions die of diseases which could be cured at the government hospitals  with medicines in sufficient stock. Surveys have shown that medical expenses are important causes of indebtedness of low income households in the country. To expect the private hospitals to be the major provider of health care in the Indian context is not planning but deception. The Planning Commission’s proposal  Bill add-to-more avoidable deaths in India.