Raising concern on universal health cover that is facing affordability issue and strongly calling for universal health security on the lines of food security, FICCI has urged the government to exclude healthcare services from the ambit of the proposed GST regime and withdrawal of service tax being imposed on the health insurance firms.

Addressing the FICCI Heal, the annual healthcare conference of the industry body here today, FICCI secretary general Dr A Didar Singh urged the Government to also to extend tax holiday given to hospitals in the small towns upto 10 years from the current period of five years. Pointing out that land will be a key problem, especially in the backdrop of the new bill, he also wanted the Centre to give free and concessional land for hospitals. Another recommendation by the industry was to give incentives to the healthcare players in tier-2 cities.

Inaugurating the conference, Planning Commission Member Dr Syeda S Hameed pointed out that half way down the current plan period, it was getting clear that India cannot spend three per cent of the GDP on health as expected while preparing the papers, on account of resources crunch.

While pointing out that only plural system will be ideal to address healthcare concerns of India that has very established streams of alternative medicines, Secretary, Department of Ayush, Nilanjan Sanyal called upon the industry to set up hospitals integrating different branches of medicines under the same roof and thus enabling the patients to choose from more options.

Pointing out that India with 17 per cent of global population carried a global disease burden of 20 per cent, WHO representative to India Dr Nata Menabde asked the industry and the government to forge public-private partnerships focusing select areas. She also suggested that India should device its own models as it cannot follow any other models in the world because of the size and the scale of healthcare programmes needed.

FICCI Health Services Committee chairperson Sangita Reddy said while 20 percent of Indians required grains security, 70 per cent of the populations needed nutrition. She called for introducing health security bill on the lines of food security bill.

The two-day event is held on the theme of 'sustainable quality healthcare'. The organisers said FICCI had made several sub-committees to come out with strategies and recommendations towards universal health coverage and the industry body will submit the recommendations, based on the deliberations involving large number of senior industry functionaries, CEOs, government officials and healthcare experts.