Association between Public Health Care Access and Financing of Health Infrastructure in India

Abstract

Health financing is presumed to have an immense importance in designing the delivery mechanism in health care service. Financing in public health care institutions (comprising local, state and central governments, along with autonomous public sector bodies) is not observed to be adequate in India as compared to the global standard. As a result, the participation of private health care institutions in this health care domain is urgently called for to address the gap between demand for and supply of health care services. Health financing by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as the government initiatives in the form of public–private partnership (PPP) signifies an alternative delivery mechanism in meeting the demand of such services. An attempt has been made in the study to examine the interstate variation of public health care access in India by considering a comprehensive index on public health care access. In addition, the study sheds some lights on the association between the outreach of health care access and the financing of the health care infrastructure in the context of different states of India. Empirical evidence suggested that the more health care financing by the government, the greater the outreach of the public health care services of a state. Thus, a significant contribution in health financing would facilitate the access of public health care by addressing the supply-side problems of the outreach of health care services in the Indian economy.