The Planning Commission has put the allocation for Ministry of Health and Family Welfare during the 12thFive Year Plan period at Rs.3,00,018 crore and it will be vetted by the National Development Council which is meeting here on December 27.

According to the draft Plan document, to be submitted to the NDC for clearance, the allocation for the health has been pegged up by 202 per cent compared to Rs.99,491 crore allocated for the sector during the 11th Plan period.

The draft plan also makes a projection in the total public funding by the Centre and States, plan and non-plan, on core health from 1.04 per cent of GDP in 2011-12 to 1.87 per cent of GDP by the end of the Twelfth Plan. A higher growth in Gross Domestic Product enhances the resource base of the government and its ability to incur higher expenditure in keeping with the sectoral priorities and coverage envisaged.

“The Twelfth Plan seeks to strengthen initiatives taken in the Eleventh Plan to expand the reach of health care and work towards the long term objective of establishing a system of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country. This means that each individual would have assured access to a defined essential range of medicines and treatment at an affordable price, which should be entirely free for a large percentage of the population. Inevitably, the list of assured services will have to be limited by budgetary constraints. But the objective should be to expand coverage steadily over time,” according to the draft document.

“There must be substantial expansion and strengthening of the public sector health care system if we are to meet the health needs of rural and even urban areas. The bulk of the population today relies upon private sector health providers, paying amounts which they cannot afford, because of the inadequate reach of the public sector. While the private sector can continue to operate for those who can afford it, an expansion of good quality affordable public sector care is essential. As supply in the public sector increases, it will cause a shift towards public sector providers freeing the vulnerable population from dependence on high cost and often unreachable private sector health care,” the document said.