Out-of-pocket health spend falls, govt share rises: Ministry

Overall, the government health expenditure increased from 1.13 per cent of the GDP in 2014-15 to 1.35 per cent in 2019-20. The government plans to increase this to 2.5 per cent of the GDP by 2025.
Asked if the government could achieve this target, NITI Aayog member (Health) Dr VK Paul said: “The trend is clear. There is an increase in healthcare spending by the government, both by the Centre and state governments.”

The per capita spending on healthcare increased from Rs 1,108 in 2014-15 to Rs 2,014 in 2019-20. “It has almost doubled,” said Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, while releasing the report.

Highlighting the other important findings, Bhushan said: “A majority of the government spend is concentrated on the primary care centres — investment in the primary sector increased from 51 per cent of the total government spend on health in 2014-15 to 56 per cent in 2019-20. Expenditure on social security schemes has increased from 5.7 per cent to 9.3 per cent in this period.”

According to the report, 55.9 per cent of the government’s total health spend for 2019-20 went to primary care, 29.6 per cent to secondary care, and 6.4 per cent to tertiary care.

The social security expenditure accounts for finances used by Central and state governments towards the payment of premiums for insurance or health assurance schemes such as PM-JAY and RSBY. While it is 9.3% in the current report, it has dipped from 9.6 per cent in 2018-19. The spend on private health insurance also increased to 7.2 per cent of the total health spend, up from 6.6 per cent in the previous report. Dr Paul said this was an encouraging trend that indicated people were accepting health insurance as the way forward.