Let’s now turn to a more fundamental question: is an insurance-based health-care system better than public provisioning of health? First, it is a well-established fact that out-of-pocket medical expenditure rises with a fall in expenditure on public provisioning. In India, where just 1% of GDP is allocated for public health, 65% of the health expenditure is out-of-pocket. If there is public provisioning of such services, the burden of spending would not have fallen on the patients. With mounting medical costs and an insurance coverage that is ephemeral, these citizens will be left high and dry.

Source: The Hindu October 15, 2018 18:37 UTC