Healthcare industry representatives and stakeholders have cheered the new initiatives announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget today stating that the schemes will help the country achieve its stated goal of universal health coverage. However more constructive and well-thought-out measures are imperative to increase the domestic industry’s access to advance healthcare technology, they pointed out.

Jaitley on Thursday announced new initiatives under the Ayushman Bharat Programme in the Union Budget 2018. A flagship National Health Protection Scheme, providing health insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year, will benefit 10 crore vulnerable families. The scheme will be the “world’s largest healthcare programme”, the minister said.

He also announced the creation of 1.5 lakh health and wellness centres with a budget allocation of Rs. 1200 crores. The centres will provide free essential drugs and diagnostic services.

“The government has reiterated its commitment to universal healthcare and has announced flagship schemes to provide better healthcare to people at bottom of the pyramid – National Health Policy and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana. These schemes will expand the reach of basic healthcare facilities in the country. While access to basic healthcare is an important determinant of Universal Healthcare, another critical factor is quality of healthcare. The latter requires access to advance healthcare technology for best health management of patients,” Chairman and Director General of MTaI Pavan Choudary said.

“The government should have looked at incentivising import of advance medical devices into the country by bringing down the customs duty. There is also a need to undo the un-nuanced price control imposed by NPPA as the move is leading to unintended consequences on the healthcare ecosystem without any significant reduction in the cost of patient. The current price control regime has also lead to a drastic fall in foreign direct investment in healthcare sector from $417 million in April-September 2017 against $173 million in the same period in 2016,” he added.

Under the current ecosystem where more than 70 per cent of medical devices have to be imported from abroad, a balanced approach to reduce cost to patient is trade margin rationalisation for distributors, gradation in pricing thereby allowing a higher price bracket for superior medical devices, and lower customs duty. These measures will reduce the cost to patient without disincentivising technical innovation by medical device manufacturers," the Mtal official said.

“The healthcare sector is a key pillar of the socio-economic development of any country. Here in India, current spending in healthcare is about 1.4 per cent of GDP.  An increase in this could substantially improve access to care and treatment for millions of Indians. We believe that more inclusive programmes and innovative public private partnerships under country’s National Health Mission 2020 would further support patients and help ensure a Healthy India,” Country Head of Shire India Vineet Singhal said.  

Many industry experts expressed concern over lack of focus in budget on R&D. “We need an increase in the core R&D investments in the ongoing ‘Make in India’ initiative for more positive impact on organisations in the healthcare sector,” Srinivasan HR, Managing Director and Vice-chairman of Take Solutions, a global player in Life Sciences and Supply Chain Management, opined.