Public Financed Health Insurance (PHFIs) Schemes in India

Abstract

The study aims to highlight the failures of the public financed health insurance (PHFIs) schemes in India. It also aims to highlight the persistence of basic flaws in the new health policy, namely the Ayushman Bharat National Health Protection mission (AB-NHPM). The new National Health Policy (NHP) announced by the government recently, has the same objectives of health attainment, as earlier stated, without specific timeline. The present government has been ambitious and aims to achieve many goals in quick time. The use of military words like “surgical” and “strategic” in government programs and schemes including the present NHP, 2018, indicates towards more clarity and focus on the objectives. Two innovative characteristics of the current program are the "strategic purchase of health care" from the private sector and the integration of health care into a social movement, among many other features. These are large-scale, long-term goals without a deadline, unlike military precision. By its own admission, the key government intervention by spending of 3 percent of GDP in public health facilities is to be achieved only by 2025. The social movement is still a longer-term goal involving decades of scaling and sustainment. Drug pricing of an increasing range of essential drugs should continue to be regulated, along with timely revisions of National Essential List of Medicines (NELM) and appropriate price control mechanisms for generic drugs.