Even a mild attempt by the Ministry of Health to suggest the primacy of public services in its draft National Health Policy receives a sharp rebuke from Niti Ayog. In a letter to the Ministry (circulated in parts of the Press a couple of weeks back), the Niti Ayog wrote: “Even though one might find it morally and ethically reprehensible – this system of two-tier care – one for those with means and a voice and the other for the voiceless and indigent will continue to exist in the short or even medium term as it would be logistically impossible to shift the majority of patient load from the private to the public sector”.
The Ayog further castigated the policy for recommending increase in public investment, arguing: “We need to assess whether drastically increasing investments will run in to the law of diminishing marginal returns, besides posing a challenge to the absorptive capacities of the state health systems.”
See the latest draft of the National Health Policy (NHP) here.
See the letter written by Niti Ayog’s Adviser (Health) Alok Kumar to MoHFW here.
See report of this in the Business Standard