Central idea: The National Health Account Estimates 2019-20 report shows an increase in government spending and a decline in out-of-pocket expenditure on healthcare.

About National Health Account (NHA) estimates

• The NHA estimates for India 2019-20 is the seventh consecutive report prepared by the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC).
• NHSRC was designated as National Health Accounts Technical Secretariat (NHATS) in 2014 by the Union Health Ministry.
• The NHA estimates use an accounting framework based on the internationally accepted standard of System of Health Accounts, 2011 developed by the WHO.
• India now has a continuous series of NHA estimates from 2013-14 to 2019-20, making the estimates comparable internationally.
• The estimates enable policymakers to monitor progress in different health financing indicators of the country.

Key highlights

Key issues

• Marginal increase: Activists are concerned about the marginal increase in government spending.
• Global laggard: This increase in government health expenditure as a percentage of GDP also takes into account capital spending, which puts India in 164th place out of 184 countries in terms of government health spending.
• No proportional increase: Total spending on health as a proportion of GDP has been going down, from 3.9% in 2015 to 3.3% in 2020, indicating a decline in consumption of healthcare services.

Conclusion

• Overall, the report shows that government spending on healthcare has been increasing, while out-of-pocket expenditure has been declining.
• There is a need to invest in public health and insurance and increase the contribution of states towards healthcare.

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