It's not a populist mesaure. You need this while you find a way to modernize agriculture practices so that the 60% who depend on farming won't have tough times.
Also, there's enough money for all these schemes while still maintaining a decent fiscal deficit. What has to be worked on is the delivery of these. For better or worse linking Aadhar to bank accounts and delivering the benefits directly into the bank accounts helped to certain extent.
What exactly is your definition of a populist measure? and please state your sources for the claim that there is enough money, not only for these programs but others too, while still maintaining the fiscal deficit.
If agriculture is modernized, it will need less men and will lead to more rural unemployment and hardships, no? Need to take measures so that 60% population should not depend on agriculture
Universal healthcare is cast as a 'populist' measure in the US. But if you look at data of cost of healthcare for nations applying universal healthcare vs those who do not in developed nations, India might rationally look at it as an economic efficiency measure.
Agricultural supports also can be looked at with a political filter, but the US provides government back agricultural insurance as a positive economic measure. Otherwise there may be a dwindling population of farmers and farming companies and increased food instability. One could argue about private vs publically funding these stabilization and boosting measures but it's much simpler/stabler to provide some forms long term guarantees via gov't policy than hoping a private market does it and does it correctly (without wiping out or consuming their customers). Are all these measures the same? No, but you have to look deeper than populist bad, private markets good.
Isn't universal healthcare that all people and communities have the same access to healthcare? India's population is 1.3 billion and this says it will cover 500 million people. So, it doesn't cover all people and communities. It covers some part of the population.
Let's say Obamacare covered only a specific section of US what would have happened then?
To clarify my stand here, I am in favor of Universal Healthcare but not this.
Edit: I saw your edit on agriculture later. So, let me count that out too. We should do everything to support agriculture but the whole policy is skewed towards grains and every bump happens helps to ingrain the fact that grains good but vegetables bad. Do we really want that? So, I am in favor of a policy which works for all and not for specific sections which at least Indian laws tend to do.
I don't know the right answer on specifics of agricultural policy. I wish grains were less emphasized in US agricultural supports - but I also acknowledge that there is a built up knowledge base, and capital momentum around grains and the efficiency of food systems (as a total system around citizen health), isn't trivial. You have to trade off energy->food, caloric efficiency, and total health just to name a few factors.
In a lot of countries with universal healthcare it is provided by the government insuring the poorest and the unemployed, and requiring everyone else to insure themselves. The idea being that it gives those with the means who might want to pick and choose higher levels of coverage can do so, but nobody gets left behind.
> Universal healthcare is cast as a 'populist' measure in the US. But if you look at data of cost of healthcare for nations applying universal healthcare vs those who do not in developed nations, India might rationally look at it as an economic efficiency measure.
You are using a bait-and-switch debate tactic. Nothing that you said disproves that claim that "Universal healthcare is a 'populist' measure"
>> The health care plan, part of the government’s 2018-19 budget presented on Thursday, would offer 100 million families up to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year.
Thats roughly $800B dollars, or over 30% of India's GDP. What am I missing? Most people won't participate?
EDIT: according to the article, the Finance Ministry has allocated $314 million (or 4 hundredths of a percent of the theoretical max total benefit). As in, the funding they acknowledge is non-existent.
As part of the budget proposal, Mr. Jaitley said the government would levy a surtax that would raise about $1.7 billion a year specifically for health care programs.
500M people times $7860/yr is $3.93 trillion (the max possible coverage). But if only $314M is authorized, the average person will receive only 314M/500M, or about 63 cents.
That's not how you calculate when it comes to insurance. You can't divorce life from maths. In your calculations you are assuming 500 million people will all fall ill at the same time and each will claim the full $7860 for the year which is next to impossible. In my opinion, $314 million is more than enough for now unless India is struck by an epidemic.
Giving free healthcare is a good step, but the important question is how good will it be and how much will be covered.
Brazil has 100% of its population (210M people) covered by free, single-payer, universal healthcare, resulting in a life expectancy of 75 years (US is 79, Japan and Switzerland with 83 IIRC).
But your experience can vary dramatically. It all depends on how much money is actually being put on it (in healthcare-costs-PPP-adjusted $/capita).
Not necessarily a counterpoint but Chile's dual system -private and public, both with copay for most- gives them a life expectancy of 81.79 years, surpassing a lot of more developed countries with free universal healthcare.
Brazil's is also dual, everyone gets covered by the public system, but there are plenty of private systems.
And Chile is always a special case, the combination of natural resources, small population and good public systems does wonder for the country. Despite the extreme differences, I tend to compare Chile to the Nordic countries more than with LatAm.
Not sure if that's scalable to larger countries, which is always the big question.
> And Chile is always a special case, the combination of natural resources, small population and good public systems does wonder for the country. Despite the extreme differences, I tend to compare Chile to the Nordic countries more than with LatAm.
You are flat out wrong with this comparison. Chile has one of the lowest tax burdens in the world. It can be accurately compared to either Hong Kong or Singapore.
It's not the taxes that makes everyone like the Scandinavian countries.
If Chile can have government programs with comparable return or results to the Scandinavian countries at a fraction of the cost then they're a hell of a lot more interesting from a policy perspectives.
Comparing governments based on taxes they levy is like comparing modes of transportation based on the amount of fuel they consume.
> Comparing governments based on taxes they levy is like comparing modes of transportation based on the amount of fuel they consume.
I don't think this is a very good analogy. We compare modes of transportation based on the amount of fuel they consume all the time. Unless I'm missing your point? And not everyone likes the Scandinavian countries. They are blessed by very homogeneous populations, in a region unscathed by war the past 70 years, with abundant natural resources, and stable governments. I wouldn't exactly consider them a good model for the rest of the world and I'm not sure what there is to like about them beyond these natural advantages and the fact that most of their people are very nice... Lucky would be more like it.
For example, Norway, the richest per capita of them derives "Export revenues from oil and gas have risen to almost 50% of total exports and constitute more than 20% of the GDP."[0] not exactly something the rest of the world can model.
First your numbers are off "Crude oil and natural gas accounted for 40% of the country's total export value in 2015.[5] As a share of GDP, the export of oil and natural gas is approximately 17%" And this has been steadily shrinking over time.
Also, don't confuse low population density with high natural resources. The US for example get's for more wealth from oil than Norway. Norway just has a tiny population (5.2M).
Further, the US has a much wider range of natural resources including vast coal deposits, gold, diamonds, etc.
Almost every universal healthcare system is has some degree of mix of private and public.
Norway is on the far extreme with it's strict restrictions on private healthcare. Almost every other country has private healthcare insurance as at least an option.
The question tends to be how much you end up contributing towards public healthcare if you take out a private option - ranging from no difference (you pay the same taxes no matter what), to only healthcare for poor/unemployed coming out of general taxation.
Strict restrictions?
I can chose whatever hospital I want and the government will pay for it regardless as long as a GP has referred me to them. If you want you can just pay out of your pocket as well without going through a GP.
There is even a portal where you can search for your ailment and choose hospital (private or public) based on their waiting lists.
The government also buys up a lot of the private spots to reduce public waiting lists. Last time I was in due to sinus infection, I went to a private and a public clinic both paid for in full by the government.
Restrictions aren't just on users, but on providers as well. If you don't see restrictions as an user, it's because most of the restrictions are on the providers.
And nothing wrong with that, I actually support that model, just like in Switzerland, where healthcare is private, but mandated by the government and heavily regulated (with less-regulated private complimentary insurance options).
It allows for innovation and competition between providers, without the harm to users due to the asymmetry of power.
Yeah, the the post I replied to claimed there were restrictions on private clinics specifically, but the public clinics/hospitals have to follow the same rules.
Also: are there any places that charge for births???? That sounds ridiculous and insane to me.
> Also: are there any places that charge for births???? That sounds ridiculous and insane to me.
Then the entire US healthcare system will sound ridiculous and insane to you :)
And, to be honest, it is. I have American friends who had accidents while in developing countries (broke an arm in Costa Rica) and were puzzled that they were treated and didn't have to pay anything, or very little (broke feet in Croatia).
are there any places that charge for births???? That sounds ridiculous and insane to me.
In the U.S., if you have decent insurance, you'll still end up paying a couple thousand or more after insurance payouts. And that's just for the birth and short (1-2 days) hospital stay. Any complications and you're potentially paying much, much more. Especially NICU, it's not unusual to pay hundreds of dollars per day of NICU care after insurance, and non-insured costs can easily end up in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and in rare situations in the millions.
The restrictions in Norway are on which services private providers are licensed to provide.
It's not that many years ago that private providers were unable to offer surgeries that were covered by public healthcare at all. E.g. most private providers in Norway once they started getting licensed at all only offered things like cosmetic surgery. The first private hospital in Norway wasn't started until 1985 (Ring Medisinske Senter, now Volvat) and I remember the controversy it caused, even though it's services originally were very restricted (they were "famous" early on for being the first place in Norway you could get breast enlargements, as they were not covered by public healthcare)
It's been softened up gradually, but you'll note i you click around on the linked provided earlier that for many types of operations the only providers are either non-profits like LHL or government run hospitals - for some this is simply because no private providers have wanted to enter that space yet, but for others it's down to concerns about availability/training making the government hesitant to allow more providers, as described elsewhere.
As I pointed out in my other reply, I'm not criticizing it (at least not as long as it is regularly evaluated for whether or not it continues to offer the best treatment options, as it seems to have been).
Yes, strict regulations. Private providers in Norway have a number restrictions on which services they can provide which tends to be much stricter than most places.
The argument for this has traditionally been that there is a unique scalability problem in medicine: You can't e.g. just educate twice as many heart surgeons, because they need a sufficient number of operations that they can assist in etc. to gain proficiency with real patients, and that pool of patients is limited.
This creates a problem where not restricting which services can be offered has the potential to lower quality of service for all. Something that's a particular concern in countries with smaller populations.
The services that are not restricted are in general areas where there's either a higher volume of patients, or where it requires less training. A sinus infection is a good example of both.
Note that I'm not arguing that this is worse in any way, but used it to delineate one of the most restrictive alternatives when it comes to the availability of private services.
An alternative to life expectancy at birth is looking at the life expectancy at later years. A 40y woman in Brazil actually has about the same expected age at death as an American (~81y).
Expectancies for a 40y man, and for 20y at both ages are somewhat lower in Brazil. This is easy to explain due to deaths by violence and traffic accidents.
Funny to see that despite being chronically underfunded AND spending way less per capita than the US, the end results are similar.
Using life expectancies only gives you a view of healthcare preventing deaths. There is a vast distance between barely alive and a good quality of life.
> It all depends on how much money is actually being put on it
Other hand a lot of public health stuff is really cheap as long as everyone gets it and it's timely. AKA people go to the hospital and get IV fluids and sent home vs going in two days later and spending a week in the ICU (or up and dying).
One of my uncles got paralyzed on his whole left side of body because of carelessness of govt hospital, lack of sanitation, corruption, and the general don't give a fuck attitude of the employees( if they cared to show up to work in the first place).
There is a running joke in India that "You can only go to a govt hospital" implication being that you'd not return alive.
I suspect this is another scheme concocted to gobble up public money via corruption. A gift that would keep giving for decades to come. For politicians to promise jobs in bureaucracy to their caste members.
Ofcourse, Nytimes piece mentions none of this in its effort to push "See even India has 'free' healthcare" ideology.
Your point, though accurately describes most government run hospitals, misses the crucial piece of information: This insurance is for Private run hospitals not government run hospitals (which is free anyways).
Quoting from the article:
If passed by the Indian Parliament and properly funded, the new program would be a vast expansion of health coverage, allowing people to visit the country’s many private hospitals for needs as varied as cancer treatment and knee replacements. Although government-run hospitals are theoretically free for everyone, the waits are long, quality is poor and corruption is endemic.
I have not been treated in govt hospital if that is what you are asking but I have been to govt hospitals to check up friends and others who were treated there.
I can't see how India is going to afford this. As stated in another comment it could cost up to $800B dollars, which is 30% of India's GDP. If this causes India to have financial issues as a country, it's their own fault for not doing basic accounting and number crunching.
That's like saying if everyone maxes out their health insurance, insurance companies will go out of business. In any given year, not everyone is going to use the ~$8000 allocated to them. Also, healthcare in India is cheap. $8000 goes a long way.
> healthcare in India is cheap. $8000 goes a long way.
Yeah I think ?5 lakh is excessive. I have a ?2 lakh cover for me and my wife and unless we both are diagnosed with bone cancer simultaneously we are in no danger of maxing it out.
Yes it would cost $800B dollars if all 100 million insured fall ill at the same time and use the entire 5 lakh rupees allocated: which is highly unlikely. This is pretty much how insurance works in any part of the world. The only difference here is that it's allocated out of tax payer money.
We got free healthcare in europe that i pay for with atrociously high taxes. Yet whenever i actually need to visit a doctor i always go to a private one.
> oh, where do you find private doctors in France?
Most doctors in France are private practitioners. They may or may not draw some (or all) of their revenue from insurance, which is partly funded by the government, but not fully (only a little more than 70% of health costs, in the aggregate).
Let me translate that: "I sure have a lot of money".
The point is having a doctor available for everybody, not just the people who can afford it. Yes, those of us who make more money pay more for it, in the form of taxes.
Ultimately, you'll need to decide if you want to care only about your wellbeing, or about society's wellbeing.
> The point is having a doctor available for everybody
Not necessarily in a timely manner, which is important for things like Autism (and because of the belief in the system, can actually harm the person). Even if you can afford it, you don't necessarily get to see a doctor, even with years long wait times. And even if you see a doctor, the actual service they provide might be worthless (e.g. suggesting you put your child in an institution and forget about it).
This is just my experience dealing with the Canadian healthcare system in Montreal. Moving to the US provided cheaper, faster, and superior results in every metric.
> Not necessarily in a timely manner, which is important for things like Autism (and because of the belief in the system, can actually harm the person).
On a related note, since you mention autism: for all the faults of the healthcare system in the US, it's far and away the best at treating chronic mental health conditions. For various reasons, most European countries have a pretty bad approach at providing access to mental health care. This isn't just for specific conditions, but for a wide range of the most common mental health ailments (depression, anxiety, ADHD, ASD, etc.)
Just getting diagnosed is incredibly difficult, but even for people who've been disagnosed, getting approved for treatment is such a long and painful process that many people give up[0]. I know people who have literally turned down jobs that would require them to live in Europe for extended periods of time because they couldn't afford (in the metaphorical sense, not financial) to go without treatment for months before getting approved.
Mental health care in the US has a lot of problems, and I hope we fix them, but there's no comparison if you're looking at other countries.
[0] Don't forget that many of these conditions also affect a person's ability to make it through the months-long process in the first place, so telling them "you'll have to jump through a series of hoops for a year before you can get treated" is basically equivalent to refusing to treat them.
I live an europe, and having recently gotten very ill, I go to nationalized doctors a lot. It's not free, but very close to free, and I would be bankrupt in the US by now. For instance, I did an MRI for less than 50 EUR. How much do you think it costs in the US? I would guess at least an order of magnitude more, likely more.
I went to a just a few private doctors too to get a second opinion, and because they had a reputation as some of the best in the field, and they were cheap as well. My guess is because they have to compete with the national healthcare system.
The govt. of Andhra Pradesh (a state in India) has pioneered a state backed insurance program several years ago with reasonable success (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarogyasri). The problem however with these programs is that corruption within the healthcare industry is still endemic and doctors create fake diagnoses and perform unnecessary surgeries on patients to get their reimbursements from Aarogya-sri. If this program is to be rolled out a national scale, the govt. needs to address the systematic corruption in the healthcare industry first.
That said, I think Aarogyasri was overall a huge success in my state and has saved millions of lives and I'm excited to see it being adopted at a national level.
Definitely Aarogyasri in AP saved millions of Lives. Current administration tried to remove the program since its not introduced by them and can't take credit for. So they are trying to kill it slowly (By removing people from program, cutting benefits etc).
I wonder what will happen to this Free Health insurance program when central government changes next time.
Isn't the current government conservative and pro-business? If the are the ones implementing free healthcare, then why should the leftist opposition want to remove it?
I bet they'll try to undermine it at every stage well before they ever get power. That will make it easy to kill or fix it when they do get power back.
If more people would expand their horizon and realize there's more to politics than "left vs right" then all this bipartisan crap flinging might get toned down a bit.
There's actually very little empirical evidence that the particular two-axis model offered by political compass (or libertarians in general) is much better at modelling real-world distribution of political ideas that the one-axis left-right model.
That's not to say that there aren't other axes of variation than the left-right axis, though.
First, read the parent comment. The parent is asking specifically about “leftist”.
Second, why do I see it that way?
Because at the end of the day that is a legitimate way to divide people. While some will attempt to divide people based on meaningless physical attributes, I’m dividing people based on what they think. Why on earth would that be unusual or undersireable?
The current state government is pro business and don’t have any money to implement or continue any past programs. Whatever money they have is spent on pet projects and making themselves rich.
The previous government even though was corrupt at least did something for the poor. I personally witnessed AROGYASHRI being used by the poor and the amount of stability it bought to their daily lives.
I also agree that there was lot of corruption in the program. If the choice is between saving the lives of the poor with corruption vs letting them die without I would choose the former any day. After all, the healthcare system in the US is filled with corrupt participants.
Let’s us not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
P.S:- I am not a citizen of India or don’t have any Indian roots but I lived there for a few years doing volunteer social work to help the poor.
> If the choice is between saving the lives of the poor with corruption vs letting them die without I would choose the former any day
This is very important. We need to finally realize that corruption is endemic to the system, and when corruption is raised as an issue it is generally to disadvantage the poor (last time I looked Wall Street is still doing fine even under the highest levels of corruption one can imagine).
False. Profitable private companies have to deal with loss all the time. It's called shrinkage. It can be mitigated, but like everything the costs of mitigation must be weighed against the benefits.
Keep in mind, right-wing governments actively exploit this "corruption exists, therefore the entire social program is worthless" bug in our national consciousness. It's an effective political tool to transfer wealth away from the poor.
I agree with parent:
> Let’s us not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Corruption in India is high by default. Just like security often can't be an after-thought in software development, anything new in India should not leave anti-corruption measures as an after-thought.
Nice thing about corruption when it involves the government and not just two corporations is the government occasionally throws people in prison. In the US commit insurance fraud against a private insurance company and they'll just drop you at most. Commit medicare fraud and the government will claw back what you took, fine you, and maybe throw you in jail.
Total budget for this scheme is 2000 Crore INR (311.6 million USD) which comes to be less 0.6232 USD/ 40 Inr. What kind of healthcare are people going to get from this free health thingy? I know that medicines/drugs are cheaper here in India but not that cheap.
Cheap, fast and great generally don’t go together. Depending on the problem, you have to pick either one or two but not all three. It will be interesting to see how this experiment pans out in India. I wholeheartedly wish success for them because this is something we have to put behind our back before we enter the next decade.
Until the details are revealed, I won't buy this. It seems to have been introduced to take advantage of upcoming elections.
The reason I'm skeptical about this step is because there are simply no specific blueprint whatsoever. And with recent government implementations, their biggest failure turns out to be ambiguity. Good example is GST. After it's launch several month's ago, almost every big/small industry is finding it hard to get the specific details.
I highly doubt about government's ability to implement it. This insurance should have been given on basis of economical standing. Choosing a random 500M number is good for making headlines but again it is not clear on who will gain this insurance benefits?, what will be covered?, how to claim it? I foresee, "divide and rule" :p
On another note, please have a look at Sensex. It's near all time high. The reason behind such rally is not FII but DII. Infact, FII has actively removed over $20Bn since 2015. There was slight influx of FII money post two months of demonetisation but again outflow increased in following months. But still Sensex didn't crashed because of the counter balance from DII or read it as mostly mutual fund companies. Also, I had noticed an increased expenditure in mutual fund investment ads on TV and almost all types of media. And these ads were sponsored mostly by govt bodies and associations. There is nothing wrong to invest in mutual funds. But when I heard about long term and short term capital gains tax today, things got much clearer for me as to why DII raised some much cash in very short period of time.
To check the validity of above numbers, you can refer to sensex related stats on moneycontrol.com and check out the YoY sensex FII/DII activity. It has a very well explanatory chart about it.
> Good example is GST. After it's launch several month's ago, almost every big/small industry is finding it hard to get the specific details.
I don't get what problems does industry have with regards to GST apart from simpler return filing and changes in rates. The implementation was itself smoother than expected. Just compare with other countries that implemented GST and you'll realise that it took almost 2 years for things to stabilize. Comparatively, the implementation and addressal of most issues took only few months! Today, Hasmukh Adhia also hinted at automatic preparation of GST returns and simplification of invoice entry by directly entering details into the system which is pretty amazing if you ask me. I'm actually quite happy with how GST has shaped. Especially when compared to other governmental bodies which have error prone systems. I have faced no issues filing GSTR-3B returns and with simplification of GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 I guess all worries are taken care of.
A key paragraph from the article which better explains the finances behind this policy:
"The health care plan ... would offer 100 million families up ... $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India."
It's much easier to provide universal healthcare, when medical costs are low. Finding ways to bring down costs in the US, would go a long way towards improving the healthcare situation here.
in a lot of countries having a government provided health care system (with private if you wish to pay more for quicker/better) is Normal rather than a political idea that only 1 side is allowed to support.
This is a blatant lie. The devil is in the details and the detail is there has been no specific funds allocated in the budget for this nor are there any specifics about how the funds will be allocated in the future.[1] This is just a vague expression of intent. Precisely the type that every politician will make when in desperate need of good will - exactly what Modi is in need of.
This. To add to this, PM Modi and the current administration habitually make grandiose promises and setting up new schemes with a lot of fanfare just in time for key elections. When the elections are won, the promises and schemes are quietly forgotten.
To whoever downvoted, here's an exercise -- download all the pdfs from http://www.indiabudget.gov.in/index.asp do a quick search in any of the documents for "National Health Protection Scheme" and let us know if you find it any where other than the speech.
Maybe in a caste society where such extremes coexist and in a post human labour world.. ah sort of shared misery socialism is preferable to beeing burned alive rich in varanasi
to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India.
If something like this is implemented, I'm curious to see what it does to prices - will a heart surgery continue to cost less than $2,000?
Healthcare seems like a supply problem to me, not a demand one. Where healthcare is affordable, demand should be stable year-to-year. It seems like what's needed is more doctors and devices, not more ways to pay.
> If something like this is implemented, I'm curious to see what it does to prices - will a heart surgery continue to cost less than $2,000?
In most countries, the cost of such operations are fixed by the state (ex: Canada).
> "Where healthcare is affordable, demand should be stable year-to-year.
What do you mean? There are so many factors that could explain higher healthcare costs, including an aging population, or better health coverage.
I'm also not sure what it means for healthcare to be affordable. In most countries, the cost seems proportional to the general wealth. The US might be the exception, since it's one of the few countries with great wealth disparity and with a non-universal system (more bureaucratic overhead/costs).
I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'.
Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance", otherwise they are making their agenda quite clear. And I say that in support of gov subsidized health insurance.
This is a pointless and pedantic complaint. It's obvious to everyone what "free healthcare" means. Words have multiple meanings, and free in this context means tax-funded. Prescriptive language policing never works.
Everyone knows what free healthcare means. They know it means it’ll come from taxes. Otherwise they are just furthering an agenda? That seems like quite a stretch.
The US government spends as much as a percentage of GDP on healthcare as the UK, and a lot of the other countries which provide free universal healthcare. The marginal increase in healthcare coverage could actually be free, given the massive inefficiencies which exist in the current system.
Somehow people insisting "don't say free" never extend this demand to free libraries, free fire department service, and so on.
Virtually everyone who has even a minor understanding of how society works intuitively understands that "free healthcare" is paid for with public money, just like "free libraries" are paid for with public money.
In fact, calling it "public health insurance" makes it actually more ambiguous and confusing. It sounds like access to it is open to anyone, like how access to a bookstore is open to anyone. "Free" is less ambiguous as to how much it costs to the person receiving the service.
TFA: “India’s government spent just 1.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product on health care in 2014, little changed as a proportion of the economy in 20 years, according to the World Bank. China, by contrast, spent 3.1 percent of its G.D.P. on health care in 2014; the United States spent 8.3 percent in the same year.”
CMS.gov: “U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $10,348 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent.”
World Bank puts total health care expenditure at 17.1% for the US in 2014 and 4.6% for India...
They must mean just US government spending, not counting private expenditure.
CMS is reporting total US healthcare spending; TFA is discussing government healthcare spending; total (federal, state, and local) government spending was 45.2% of all health expenditures in the US [0], which applied to the 17.9% of GDP for total US healthcare expenditures gives 8.1% GDP public expenditures in 2016, very similar to the 8.3% TFA reports for 2014.
EDIT: Ah, my post crossed your edit, which recognizes the issue, but:
> They must mean just US government spending, not counting private expenditure.
The part you quote from TFA explicitly says it is comparing government expenditures.
I am wary of applauding before seeing how well this is implemented. India is known to come up with lot of big programs that make good rhetoric, but not all of them are implemented with equal amount of vigor or commitment.
I am sure part of the motivation may be to help next election cycle which is coming soon.
This is a sham. There is no specific allocation for the same in the budget. State Governments have been instituting insurance cover for population for ages and it is available around the same quantum. Generally insurance in India like any other country has the effect of artificially inflating healthcare cost. India would do well to spend money on improving public health infrastructure instead.
India has 1,320m people. This headline is slightly concerning, given the caste system in place that engineers poverty. Who is paying for it and who is getting the benefit?
The article reads as if this is health insurance, however it uses both terms health care and health insurance. Those are entirely different from each other.
One believes that preventative care will increase health, limiting the need for procedures and pills. The other believes that one can pay a lower premium (possibly through the state), betting on getting sick. These are opposite of each other.
I'm not saying this is bad - just that people have to know what is being discussed, or inevitably people will be disappointed.
India doesn't get it. Defending the world from terrorism is 1000x more important then basic health insurance. How can health insurance defend the people against suicide bombers? The only thing that can defend people from suicide bombers is the 1.5 Trillion dollar F-35, the greatest war plane ever made.
I might be sounding negative, but the current PM is known to be someone who just promises a million things. This is just a prop for 2019 because he has absolutely destroyed the economy and the RBI.
I seriously doubt if this will actually be implemented ever. This is the magic of India, They won't deny insurance, but when the people will go to create insurance, there will be some or the other issue with the system and they won't be able to apply for it.
Also the media is a sycophant of the govt so nobody will question it and on the exterior, it'll be shown that they did provide insurance although nobody got anything.
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