Abstract
This paper highlights how privatization in healthcare is being promoted and its further growth facilitated through the adoption of neoliberal policies in India. The approach to financing healthcare has been shifting from public provisioning to tax-funded health insurance merely to achieve health coverage. The idea of the strategic purchasing of care from private providers promoted through insurance seems likely to aggravate the crisis in access and healthcare delivery. Such a crisis will escalate costs and promote concentration and monopolies in the healthcare market. Under the recently promoted neoliberal policy, India is compromising the goal of comprehensive provision of public health services, which is essential for creating a healthier society.
Highlights
As an important commodity for individuals and nations as a whole, healthcare has been on the political agenda of every government across the world
The primary health care (PHC) approach emerged as a central concept for attaining the goal of Health for All (HFA) by 2000
This paper aims to highlight the changes that neoliberal thinking and policies have brought to the Indian healthcare sector, and to list the implications
Summary
As an important commodity for individuals and nations as a whole, healthcare has been on the political agenda of every government across the world. The primary health care (PHC) approach emerged as a central concept for attaining the goal of Health for All (HFA) by 2000 This concept was heavily concerned with people, with the principles of social justice, accessibility, appropriateness, and acceptance of medical services, with consideration of the needs of people in the communities, their participation, and their orientation to the concept of health services. The major developments in the health sector are explained, with the discussion organized around the following themes: the first 35 years of independence—designing the healthcare system; the liberalization phase of the 1990s, an era that saw a reduced role for the state in healthcare provision; liberalization within the health sector since 2000; and the new financing approach under which public funds support private insurance and healthcare. Several data sets are adduced to strengthen the arguments, and reference is made to these at the relevant places
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