National Health Account Estimates

The National Health Account Estimates 2019-20 have been released recently.

Key highlights of the findings:

• Increase in government spending: There has been a consistent increase in government spending.
  • The government spent 1.35% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (total value of the final goods and services in a year indicative of a country’s economy) on healthcare during the year, bouncing back from a slight drop seen in 2018-19 as per the report.
• Declining out-of-pocket expenditure by people: Money spent by people from their own pocket on healthcare has been going down.
  • 1% of the total spending on healthcare in FY2020 came directly out of people’s pockets. But this is actually a 15.5 percentage point drop from 62.6% of the spending coming out-of-pocket in FY 2015.
• Increase in social security: There has been a consistent increase in social security expenditure by the government, which increased from 5.7% of the total spending on health in FY 2015 to 9.3% in FY 2020.
• The highest focus was given to the primary sector: A major chunk of the government’s health spend was in the primary sector.
  • Out of the total spending by the government on healthcare in FY 2020, 55.9% went to primary care, 29.6% went to secondary care, and 6.4% went to tertiary care.
  • Other Sectors: To compare, the government spent 51.3% on primary care, 21.9% on secondary care, and 14% on tertiary care in FY 2015.

Government Schemes

• Ayushman Bharat – Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs): Services at AB-HWCs are free and universal to all individuals residing in the service area.
• Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY): AB-PMJAY provides health coverage of up to Rs 5.00 lakh per family per year to 10.74 crores poor, deprived families as per Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) database