Health care is the sine qua non to develop and sustain a healthy workforce. In this context, discuss whether Public private partnership in health sector is essential or not.
Refer - Business Line
IAS Parliament 7 years
KEY POINTS
Major issues in health sector
· Highly inadequate spending. (1.3% of GDP on public health)
· Acute paucity of trained manpower.
· Inequalities in urban and rural Health care system.
· Infrastructural deficiencies (Medical equipments, Patient-bed ratio, Research laboratories).
Benefits of PPP in health sector
· Individualised care is easier in private than in government institutions.
· Choice of doctors, timings, and the treatment is possible in Private sector.
· Privatisations will helps Cutting edge technologies reaches poor.
· Privatisation provides better nursing and allied services.
· It offers better hospitality to attendants and also the other care-givers.
Demerits of PPP in health sector
· Highly expensive and largely unregulated.
· Race to profit degrades public interest.
· Prescription of tests and treatments that patients actually don’t require.
· Enhance unhealthy competition between service providers because, the ultimate objective is to earn money.
· Less profit sectors in health industries will be neglected.
Solutions
· India committed to raise spending on health to 2.5 per cent of the GDP by 2022.
· Instead of implementing private sectors over public health care, government can involve them in few services.
· Patients can be given subsidies for the private treatments, based on facilities which are not available in public institutions.
· The elite working classes of the nation has specialised med claim policies provided by the government, such approaches can be followed for public.
· Convergence of commercial and social interests to make a large on-ground impact is necessary, but with strict regulatory measures.
