Health Policy Issues and Health Programmes in ... - Amazon S3

Health Financing in India: Some Issuesto the community, health care financing can play a major role of financial support toadministrators at all levels, particularly for districts and lower levels and below for governanceand delivery of services.130Financing of health care, not only in terms of a single framework of “scarcity of resources,” but interms of a broader mandate of “sustainability of financial resources” and “resources efficiency”considerations, is both vital and crucial. However, there is still a need for greater understandingof this area in order to improve financial information for health planning, health administration,and policy making. In the Indian context, district-level health planning and administrationrequire resource transfers at various levels. This is especially true under the process ofdecentralization, which further necessitates the comprehensive and systematic study of healthcare financing. Both health care providers and consumers of health services need to understandissues of health care financing in order to answer the following questions.l How can a balance be created to minimize the divergence of equity, efficiency, and quality?l What should health care financing consist of?l Should health financing be concerned with health care services or health-related sectors?l How much have states been spending for health care and what should be the share of theprivate sector?l How much do central, state, district, and municipal/local government/Panchayati RajInstitutions (PRIs) spend on the promotion of health care?l From what other alternative options and sources could the money for health programmescome?l What type of health programmes and services for health and health facilities could befinanced from different financing options on a priority basis?l Why and how much should consumer health care beneficiaries pay for financing health care?l What can be done to ensure that resources used for financing health care are used moreefficiently?l How far, and in which direction, can health care financing by the government meet theobjective of equity and safeguard the interests of those who are vulnerable?Sources of Health Care FinancingAt the health policy and planning levels currently, there are serious considerations aboutmultiple sources of financing and management of health care services. As proof, in India aseparate working group has been constituted during the eighth Five-Year Plan in the area ofhealth care financing to debate the topic of multiple sources of financing of health care andsuggest viable options, such as user charges and community health insurance, along with asafety net mechanism for poor people.Problems of Health Care Financing in IndiaAlmost all the states in India, particularly in the present financial crisis (including their debtburden) and at macro- and decentralized-levels (i.e., district, block, and village), have specifictechno-economic problems of health financing. These common problems (below) must beaddressed for a common solution.l Lack of funds